Do You Come from the Land Down Under?

It is nice to be quoted. I was alerted today that someone in Australia has published one of my articles for Australian business people to read. It shares some thoughts that were first expressed at CustomerThink.com. (Be sure to check out that website. You may want to search for "Chris Stiehl" there and see some of what I have written in the past.)

One of the advantages of being published is that people can comment on your thoughts and your work. That enables an author to direct the discussion, to put a position out there and see what interest it sparks. I appreciate my thoughts about salespeople being shared in Australia. I cannot wait to read any responses from "The Land Down Under."

So, what was the point of the article? Salespeople are often blamed and measured, not often listened to or studied. I have seen salespeople being required to spend hours a week filling out reports and paperwork (OK, it was mostly computer "paperwork"). The salespeople were unhappy about this. They understood management's need to "measure" their activity, but wished that the measurement could be less intrusive. Instead of sitting at a computer desk, they felt they should be out selling!

The very best salespeople listen well. That is the key attribute. It can be shown that faster and easier tracking or reporting techniques not only make salespeople happier and more satisfied, but it also makes them more productive, in dollars and cents, their key measurement.

Management needs to listen to the salespeople just as if they were another segment of the marketplace. What I would recommend is that each company consider obtaining a "Voice of the Salesperson" in much the same way that customers are researched - collecting their needs in an open-ended research effort, possibly using an objective 3rd party to ask the questions and obtain their needs. Then, set about meeting those needs. The sales force is the voice and face of the company. Treat them as a valued resource.

What do you think?

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!

Take Time to STOP ... and Listen!

You may have read about this. Joshua Bell, the world renowned violinist, played incognito as a "street musician" for an hour in the DC subway as an experiment for the Washington Post.

He played six challenging Bach pieces, as passersby hurried on their way to work. Over a thousand people rushed by. A few people gave him money, and about 6 stopped to listen. Only one person recognized him.

Various people, from time to time, would pause or slow down and admire his talent. One three year old boy didn't want to rush past. He kept stopping to listen. Finally, his mother pulled him away. He was turning his head the entire time. Bell collected $32.17 for an hour's performance. There was no applause or recognition of any kind. Just silence. He had played a violin valued at $3.5 million.

This was a performance by one of the world's best musicians, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made. Did anyone notice? Just days before, Joshua Bell had played to a sold-out theater in Boston, where pretty good seats went for $100 each to sit and listen to him play.

Is there beauty all around us if we stop, look and listen? How much are we missing by rushing through life? Are we in too much of a hurry to appreciate beauty and life? Are only innocent children open to this kind of experience?

The Washington Post won a Pulitzer for their feature article about this experiment.

Take a moment today, right now, and appreciate life and sounds around you. You are not here forever. You have an expiration date.

As we have argued in this blog before, are you truly listening to the world around you? Learn how to do that, and you will be successful in business, and in life!

Is it lack of jobs or lack of skills? + social networking question

Is there a lack of jobs out there, or a lack of skills and training to fill the jobs that are available? A new book co-written by my friend and co-author, Henry DeVries, claims there are plenty of jobs, if you have the right skills and training. The book is called Closing America's Job Gap. It is available for pre-sale next week; due to be published in January. I think the book is terrific. I provided a little data for the book from my experiences doing research on the Workforce Investment Act. The main premise of the book is that even though unemployment stands at or near 10%, there are jobs available. There is just a lack of skilled and trained workers. With math and science skills declining in America's workforce, the workers and the jobs just aren't matching up too well. To read more about the book, click HERE.

If you are a potential employer or a job seeker, you should read this book! Please add to the comments on Barnes&Noble.com or Amazon.com about the book, even if the comments are brief and merely about anticipation, as the pre-sale starts next week and I'd like to help Henry develop some "buzz" about the book.

Now, does your employer encourage or discourage social networking activity at work? We have all heard of companies that actually encourage it, and have experienced success. PetCo, for example, has become a preferred commentator in the world of social networking by contributing and hosting helpful conversations about pets. I'm sure that does not hurt their business. In the cartoon referenced here, Dogbert winds up giving a promotion to an employee who "wasted" all his time at work on social networking. He was given the job of being the new Marketing exec. Other companies punish employees for such activities.

What do you think? Is spending a little time building your presence on social networks at work worthwhile? What limitations should there be? How should this be monitored?

Are You Being Served? Are You Free?

Many of you may recognize the phrases in the title from the hilarious British sitcom about Grace Brothers Department Store in London in the 1970s and 1980s. When a customer came onto the floor needing attention, Captain Peacock would ask the customer, "Are you being served?" If the customer needed attention, he would address one of the staff with "Are you free?"

I have several friends who always ask if I am free when they call. Of course, they are being polite and hoping I can help them. They realize that I will take their call, even if it may not be convenient for me at the moment to do so. I rarely ignore the phone. After all, I am a consultant, always hoping for a client. I am also an engineer/psychologist, hoping for a problem to solve (whether I am paid to solve it or not!).

What is puzzling to me is how many people act like Wally in the Dilbert cartoon above. As a market researcher, I am often calling business people to conduct interviews for my clients. Of course, the business people have been contacted by email or telephone by my client, telling them that I would call, what the reason was and perhaps even offering them an honorarium for completing the interview with me. So, why don't business people answer the telephone?

I realize that they may be busy, on vacation or otherwise unable to talk at the moment. They may not share my anticipation about answering the telephone. But what should I think when they never answer their phone or email? ...even after repeated calls and emails asking for a time and date to speak with them? At times, I ask if someone else may be able to answer my questions, or I ask them to give some basic answers via email. If the sales staff or marketing staff of my client have properly prepared the respondent, what could the issue be? At times I feel like the fellow who is trying to trap Wally in the cartoon above. (I have a couple of friends who have just written Slaying the Email Monster, learn their techniques to never let an email languish without response or action).

The business people often are surprised at how easy it is to complete the call, once we are talking, and how often they find the interview enjoyable, not a pain. They often learn quite a bit by going through the process of being interviewed.

What do you think? Are one-on-one telephone interviews going the way of the dinosaur? Is this type of market research, with the personal connection, out of date in the era of social media?

I don't think so. The research process, as described in Pain Killer Marketing, is actually working quite well with customers, especially when they are well prepared as to what to expect and what the questions may be. The customers want to share their thoughts and feelings about the product or service, not just cold cryptic responses to an online survey. There may be a lot going on behind a rating on a survey. Will this fact change as the generations change? Will Gen X and Gen Y customers be tougher to get to talk on the telephone for 20 minutes?

What is your perception? For how long will the one-on-one interviewing techniques described in Pain Killer Marketing work? How should they be adapted for social media?

My Business Card is a Book?

I know this sounds like an expensive business card idea, but it works. Think of how easy it is to throw away a business card, but people never want to throw away a book. For some reason, we think books are valuable, to be treasured.

The best networker at any meeting is not the one who gives out the most business cards, but the one who collects the most. This lesson is gradually being learned by consultants and business people.

So how does it work to have a book as a business card? In our view, you don't want to give your card, or your book, to everyone. You need to size up each person who asks for your card at a conference or show and see if you can acquire theirs instead. If you begin an email conversation and they really are a prospect, the book is an easy way to document your competence and expertise, as well as a convenient item for them to pass on to others whom they may know. In that way, they become your advocate within their company, sharing your thoughts and ideas with others. The fact that books are so difficult to throw away works for you.

This past weekend was the "Marketing With A Book" seminar in La Jolla with Henry DeVries and friends. It was intimate (20 people) and great fun, as well as a very good experience for those who are learning how to market themselves and their books. We were somewhat surprised that there were seminar attendees who had not seen their book as a potential business card. If giving the book to someone can result in a $25,000 consulting gig, what is the problem with spending $10 on the book? As Henry and Liz Goodgold (one of the speakers) and others have said: the book should be just one piece of your overall marketing and branding strategy, not an end in itself. Making videos (DVDs) and CDs of chapters or ideas in the book is the logical next step. People have relationships with people. Use your book to promote YOU.

As one of my clients said when offering me a job, "When it came down to choosing between you and your competitors, we went with you. Afterall, you wrote the book on the subject!"

Feel free to visit either of our websites: www.stiehlworks.com and www.newclientmarketing.com for more information on us and where we will be appearing. By the way, Mr. DeVries has a new book being released in January Closing America's Job Gap. Watch for his book tour appearances.

Is Survey Data Always Relevant or Good?

Obviously, if you are fielding a customer satisfaction survey, you want to have good questions. However, some companies have stopped fielding surveys. They are flying blind. Why? Management claimed that they were spending a lot of money to find out that the numbers never changed! Of course, they had not executed the necessary improvements to change the numbers. More importantly, they had not used customer data to develop the questions!

If the questions were written by engineers and market researchers without consulting customers, how relevant are they? It could be that the company referenced in the previous paragraph would be getting more information, more actionable information, if they had good questions, relevant questions.

We talked in a previous posting about how many businesses that changed brands on a product, do so because of poor customer service, having nothing to do with the performance of the product. Does your survey ask about non-product performance? Shouldn't it?

As Dilbert says above, how relevant is your data? Are your questions important to customers?

If you need help developing a survey that reflects the Voice of the Customer for your customers, give us a call at StiehlWorks (619-516-2864).

What do you think, is the expense of executing customer satisfaction surveys a good investment? Is the data worth the cost?

What Does "Service" Mean in Customer Service?

It seems that many companies are investigating their interactions with customers these days. They may be focussing on the wrong issues, however!

One of my clients asked me to check out some improvements they had made to their customer service activities. When I called the customers, they reported almost without exception that they had noticed the improvements, they were beneficial, just not in the customers' highest priority areas for the customer service activities.

In fact, the areas of the highest improvement priority for the customers were the same as I had found six years previously in a similar study: having good language and communication skills on the part of the phone rep, making sure they understand the customer's issue.

While the client was very happy to have invested in success with their improvements, the customers were not all as excited as the client was. The customers were thrilled to be asked their opinion, and happy that improvements were being made. They just wished improvements could be made in other areas. The customers were hopeful because the results were encouraging. The hope was that as progress was made, more important issues would be tackled.

How about your company? Do you know your customers' highest priorities for improving your customer service activities? How many customers actually like all of the phone trees they must navigate to get where they want to go in your system, or even to hear an actual customer service employee? My guess would be....NONE!

The phone trees that I have had to navigate just this week remind me of the days when I worked at GM: we are going to do this to you just because we CAN, not because you want it! Remember, according to surveys as many as 75% of all senior managers and above NEVER talk to a customer. Now, it seems that the companies want to make sure that the customer almost NEVER talks to an employee!

Even when you are able to access an employee in one of the phone trees, you are often asked two or three times for the same pieces of information! ...name, birthday, address, phone number, etc.
Today I stared at the phone when the automated system asked for my birthday for the third time on the same call, before I got to my destination in the tree. Someone blew it when doing the logic for this phone tree!

Do companies understand that this phone call may be their only access to the customer? This is the company's voice and face, and it seems so dense and downright stupid! I wonder what research is conducted on these systems. I have friends who are the "IVR Docs." They try to make sure their clients don't encounter these difficulties.

What are your experiences? Have you found phone trees that work well? Share with the rest of us, please!

Are You Stuck?

Organizations tend to be entities that are difficult to move, to change directions or to make significant leaps...much like a cow!

This image was inspired by a friend who helps people who are "stuck" address their problems and move on (www.LivBig.com). He was a recent student in my class at UCSDx, despite his maturity and business sense. Doesn't this cow look as if it is in pain?

Since the class, I have thought about my friend's business model as applied to my clients: for how many of them is their pain the fact that they are stuck? I would guess this is true for many of them. They have the same customers, the same data from customer satisfaction surveys and they are having difficulty moving the numbers.

A couple of my clients have engaged me to help them see things differently. Where to start? ...by talking to the Customers! For both of these clients, we are listening to customers describe their pains and what is getting in the way of making progress, not just with my clients but in their business world at large. We are in the process of rethinking the customer satisfaction surveys and who the competition is.

In one case, top management is getting bored with what they are seeing in the survey results. Management is even thinking about terminating the customer research efforts, because nothing new was being learned! My client used one of my videos (shown below) to justify continuing the expense. In the video, I tell the story of spending $20K to $30K on customer research and reaping $3,000,000 a year in savings as a benefit, while customer satisfaction went up!

Ask yourself: Am I stuck? Is my company stuck? Do I need to revamp the way I see the customers in the emerging marketplace? More importantly, have I learned how the customers view us in the new marketplace (outside looking in)? That is a tough perspective to acquire! To be successful, you must be able to view your business as if you were a customer looking in. Why should they do business with you? How does working with you help them get more business? How easy are you to do business with? Can you be easily replaced, or can the need for your services dissappear?

If you or your company are "stuck," please call me and talk about how you can get them "unstuck." If you use the video, please share the outcome with me. Maybe I can help you get unstuck! Call (619)516-2864 or visit www.stiehlworks.com.

Business Metrics & the Voice of the Customer

Are You Tired of Selling Features Yet? Shut Up & Listen!

I keep being amazed by how few salespeople know to just listen, listen to what the customer's problems are (their "pains").

I have recently conducted research for a client that included finding out how well their salespeople performed. I know it is a tough economy out there, but the worse sales get, the more talking this company's salespeople were doing. This is backwards!

When I spoke to the customers, they told me they did not want to hear all about the features that were nice, but did not apply to their specific problem area. In fact, the more the salespeople spoke about those features, the more the customer thought, "How much is all that going to cost me?!" Many of the salient features in the salesperson's discussion were neither needed nor wanted, at any price.

The best salespeople in the study actually spoke the least, but were classified as "very good listeners," among other traits. Sales necessarily involves building trust between the salesperson and the customer. The skill of "active listening" builds trust. The best salespeople demonstrated this skill in their work. The customers felt that the best salespeople really understood their pain, their issue. These salespeople only spoke after listening carefully to the concerns of the customer, what their pains were, even if they did not involve the salesperson's product or service. These salespeople spoke about the features that addressed the pain of the customer, or the features that the customer asked about. They spoke of resources beyond or in addition to their own products and services that might be accessible to the customer. When this "active listening" technique was employed, the customers trusted the salesperson, perceived them as knowledgeable beyond their own products and services, and thought the extra features were a bonus, not an unnecessary expense. It was the same device, with the same features, but the perception of the customer was shaped by the behavior of the salesperson.

How do your salespeople stack up?

Ever Thought About Writing a Book? Come to our exciting event!

Chris Stiehl is a panelist at the Marketing with a Book Summit in La Jolla, CA. Henry DeVries is the Host!

Marketing With A Book™ Summit

How to Dramatically Increase Revenue, Gain Credibility and Attract Clients by Publishing A Book With Built-In Marketing

February 20-21, 2010
Location: La Jolla Shores Hotel, San Diego ($119 room rate for this beachfront hotel) www.ljshoreshotel.com
Saturday 8 am to 5 pm
Sunday 8:30 am to 1 pm
Price: $1,000 (but early bird discount of $495 until Feb. 14, 2010)
Register with Paypal here
(You do not need a Paypal account to register)

Headliners:

• Arthur Chou, president of WBusiness Books
• Mark LeBlanc, past president of National Speakers Association and author of the book “Growing Your Business”

Speakers:

• Will Marre, co-founder and former president of the Covey Leadership Center where he translated the concepts of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People into powerful leadership courses taught to over one million executives world wide
• Holly Berkley, author of "Marketing in the New Media" and "Low Budget Online Marketing for Small Business"
• Liz Goodgold, author of “Red Fire Branding”

Panelists:

• Chris Stiehl, author of “Pain Killer Marketing”
• Chris Witt, author of “Real Leaders Don’t Use PowerPoint”
• Rhonda Sher, author of “The Two-Minute Networker”
• Jeremy Duimstra, Web marketing and search engine optimization expert

Host:

Henry DeVries, founder of New Client Marketing Institute, author of “Self-Marketing Secrets” and “Client Seduction”, marketing faculty and assistant dean of UC San Diego continuing education

Who should attend:

You’ll benefit the most by attending this program if you are a…

• Management consultant
• Professional service firm
• Executive coach
• Professional speaker
• PR person responsible for consultant and professional service firm marketing

Spots Are Limited

We are only offering 27 seats to this conference and 10 were already taken before we could even launch the Web site. We want this to be a small group so there can be interaction, feedback and a chance for one-on-one time with the presenters. After all spots are sold we will be putting interested people on a waiting list.

How To Register

Please call Henry at 800-514-4467 with questions.