Customer Service – Page 2 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

A Simple Sales Tip for Maintaining Great Relationships

August 15, 2018/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

How effective are you at maintaining client relationships? Do you stay in touch with them or do you lose the relationship over time? Do your clients and prospects respond to your messages or do your emails end up in a black hole? Here’s a simple tip for maintaining contact with your clients and prospects.

Client relationships are the lifeblood of any business. Be deliberate about maintaining them. Regular contact will keep you top of mind.

Find meaningful “excuses” to reach out to them. Some of my favorites include “Hey I read an article and I thought of you” or “I heard about a cool new technology and I thought you might be interested in it.” Send these notes and leave it at that. Don’t try and sell during those interactions. They know you eventually want to sell them something. Beware of excessive contact, they’re going to ignore you or block you if you’re in their inbox too much. Focus on being helpful and good things are going to come.

I have one client who I’ve had a great relationship with over the years. Every once in awhile I’ll see something that I think would be interesting to him and I drop him a note and I said “I read this and I thought of you.” He always writes back and says “Thanks for the information. Interesting. I appreciate it… not that you’re trying to sell me something.” This has become a running joke with us that at the end of every interaction one of us says “not that you’re trying to sell me something.” He understands the nature of the relationship because he is a great salesman too. He and I both know the deal but he doesn’t mind my outreach. He actually welcomes it because he knows I’m trying to be helpful. These interactions help me stay top of mind, so anytime he has a need that my firm can fill, he’s going to call me first.

Some reasons you might wanna reach out to connect with your clients and prospects include things like:

A Simple Way to be More Professional

December 20, 2017/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

When salespeople call you to explore working with you, a simple technique can help you appear much more professional. If you’re not interested, just say so. Immediately.

Over the 14 years I’ve run my firm, I’ve heard a polite “no, thank you” more times than I can count. That’s fine. Rejection, especially when it’s quick, enables me and my team to spend our time on more fruitful conversations.

It’s the silence that kills me. And I know I’m not alone in this. I’ve spoken with countless executives, entrepreneurs, and salespeople over the years and there’s a common pet peeve – people who simply don’t respond to your messages.

It’s unprofessional folks. It’s discourteous. And if you were the one being ignored, you’d see how unpleasant and frustrating it can be.

“But Mike, I get so many sales calls and some of them are so pushy and I’m so busy so I don’t have time to respond.”

Yes, there are idiot salespeople who don’t know how to take “no” for an answer. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about are the respectful salespeople and entrepreneurs who legitimately believe their product or service is a fit for you and your organization. They draft a polite email or leave a courteous voicemail. Then they wait patiently for a reply.

And they wait.

Eventually they’ll follow up a couple of months later to check in. And again, they get no response.

Here’s the important thing to realize – you’re wasting their time and coming across as unprofessional. And those salespeople and entrepreneurs have long memories. By ignoring them rather than being candid that they’re not a fit, you’re taking a risk without even realizing it.

5 Questions You Must Answer to Measure Your Business Well

November 29, 2017/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Focusing on metrics is key to achieving your desired business results—but it can be difficult to determine which metrics actually matter. There are five major questions you need to answer to ensure the metrics you’re measuring matter and you can take action based upon what they tell you.

Some metrics are easy to put numbers to. Revenue, inventory levels, and customer retention are solid numbers. Knowing those quantitative measures is essential to understanding your business. That said, you also need to measure qualitative aspects of your business like associate engagement and customer satisfaction.

Regardless of the measurement you need to answer five things about it:

1. What’s the measurement’s purpose? Know the significance of the metric and what you’ll change in your business based on the numbers you measure.

2. What data source will you use? Different sources of data can yield different results.

3. How will you calculate the metric? Define a formula, especially for complex measures.

4. How frequently will you measure? Measuring takes effort. Be efficient and only measure as frequently as you need to.

5. Who will review the measure? Define the stakeholders who are going to receive the reports.

For qualitative measures, the data gathering method is critical. Use a simple and standard method wherever possible. Consistency matters over time so you can get true trend data. Put thought into the measures up front so you’re not changing them frequently and invalidating data you’ve already collected.

My firm conducts classroom training. At the end of each course, we’ve asked the same 14 qualitative questions for the last 13 years. Regardless of the class we’re teaching, the instructor teaching it, or which client we’re teaching it for, it’s always the same 14 questions. What that enables me to do is get a true sense of trend data and compare instructors, clients, and courses over time. I can look at a course that I just taught yesterday and see how it stacks up versus something I taught last year or even last decade. That consistency gives me a richness of data to analyze.

As you think about the measures for your organization think about both the quantitative and qualitative ones and apply those five questions to everything you’re going to measure.

Sometimes you’ll want to create your own measure in order to capture a unique aspect of your business or to drive a specific behavior. When building these unconventional measures, articulate the purpose of measuring it, and specify how long you’ll measure it, especially if it’s being used to drive short-term performance.

4 Questions to Make Difficult Switching Decisions Much Easier

July 31, 2017/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Customer Service, Guest Blogger, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

In an age of too many options, four simple questions can provide a clear approach to making those frequent decisions in a way that saves us time.

Today’s post is by Jack Quarles, author of Expensive Sentences (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

We live in a time of unprecedented options. Those of us in developed economies of the 21st century, even with average incomes, have more choices than ever before in what we eat, what we wear, our jobs, where we live or travel, our entertainment and education… and the list goes on.

Our ability to customize the details of our lives is dazzling, but it is not free. Abundant options require abundant decisions, and decisions require energy. Life’s never-ending buffet brings byproducts: too many options can paralyze us, and fear of taking the wrong option can haunt us.

We can benefit from thinking about how we make decisions, and intentionally adopting practices that help us manage the cost of decision-making and feel more confident in the choices we do make.

Let’s examine a class of decision that we face every day: stay or go, fish or cut bait, keep on the same path or change direction. More specifically, we’ll consider people and companies we pay, whether at work or at home:

Do I like my accountant, or is it time to switch?
Should I change gyms?
Do we need a new marketing consultant?
Is our lawn care guy charging us too much?

There are both cost and benefit components to these questions. If your gym is nearby and your friends go there, it may be worth twice the price of a different gym with the same equipment because you’re more likely to go and use it. That’s an easy case. Other decisions aren’t so easy, and sometimes those questions of “Am I paying too much for this?” keep lingering in our mind without a clear answer.

Replacing Gray with Black and White

Selling by Word Alone Doesn’t Cut It in Today’s Market

May 1, 2017/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Selling isn’t just about the words you pitch. A much more powerful approach is to show the customer your work and let them interact with it early in the sales process.

Today’s post is by Ken Rutsky, author of Launching to Leading (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

In an 1899 speech in Philadelphia, Missouri Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver is reported to have said,

“I come from a state that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri, and you have got to show me.”

And from that day forward, Missouri has been known far and wide as the “Show Me State.”

Today, marketers and sales teams alike should take heed of this advice and move beyond telling and describing their value to showing and demonstrating it to buyers early and often in the buying cycle. After all, what’s really left to tell since the customer has probably already visited your website?

There is no shortage of materials and advice out there on the topic of content marketing. Content Rules, by Handley and Chapman—a popular book in marketing circles—spends a lot of time focusing on just that; and it is necessary and recommended reading and table stakes for today’s sales and marketing efforts.

However, stopping there would fail to take two critical variables into account: engagement and experience, the “Show Me” factor of modern sales and marketing efforts. One of the hallmarks of breakthrough market leadership is very high levels of engagement and experience delivered in our marketing programs and sales experience.

We can look at both engagement and experience as continuums. Engagement measures the level of interaction that the customer has with our content; we are most engaged when we are interacting, least when we are reading. Engagement, through multiple senses and interaction, creates memorable content-marketing engagements.

From an experience perspective, we can describe or demonstrate our value, or have the customer participate in understanding the value. Communication of value via experience is vastly more effective at winning customers’ preference than description. The combination of engagement and experience is the holy grail of marketing and sales effectiveness. Let’s take a look at an example:

3 Things You Must Get Right if You Want Happier Customers

January 23, 2017/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Customer loyalty takes just as much energy to build as new customer growth. Unfortunately companies spend too much time focusing on new customers and not taking care of the ones they already have.

Today’s post is by Noah Fleming, author of The Customer Loyalty Loop (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Most executives I talk to feel like they’re drowning in data and yet anyone and everyone within the organization is telling them they need more and more data! Do you ever feel overwhelmed with all the things you need to worry about, let alone the collection of “big data” with the belief that data might help you generate better customer relations, or a more loyal customer?

I’m going to let you in on a big secret. The companies and clients that I work with who are at the top of their games, or continuously increasing revenue are only really placing a concerted effort on three key areas. I’m going to warn you, there’s nothing ground-breaking here that you don’t already know, but how these companies are focusing on these areas might surprise you.

I’ll tell you until the cows come home that most organizations are too focused on the new customer at the expense of their existing customers, but I’m also a realist. The current customer is the beating heart of any great business, but you need new customers to grow. Anybody who tells you otherwise should be thrown from your office. Today we’re going to about new and existing customers.

The first area that these companies excel in is their uncanny ability to sell to their existing customers more often. I said sell, not just “market to,” and not just putting offers in front of them, but selling. You need the same level of gravitas and effort that is put towards new customer acquisition, applied to selling more to your existing customer base. That requires a customer retention process. Most businesses have a sales process but not a retention process. The best companies do.

I once heard an author and marketer say that all great sales and marketing is just about sharing your message over and over again. He might have been half right, once. A decade ago, maybe a quarter right. Now, it’s more like a tenth.

If you want to sell to your prospects and existing customers either the first time or the sixth time, then you need to get three things right. But you need to get them right, all the time and every time.

Awareness

3 Ways to Tap Into the Link Between Service and Sales

April 4, 2016/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

There are three keys to tapping into the link between service and sales – technical prowess, hospitality, and the wow factor. If you’re able to get your organization to focus on these three elements of service delivery, you can expect outstanding results.

Today’s post is by Donna Cutting, author of 501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

The character Don Draper in the television show Mad Men once said something to the effect of, “The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.” While Mr. Draper is a fictional character, his words couldn’t be truer.

A study by Harris Interactive in 2011 determined that 89 percent of consumers quit doing business with a company (and went to a competitor) because of a bad customer experience. Compare this to 59 percent in 2007 and you’ll see that one of two things is happening. Either customer service has gotten worse; or consumers are becoming empowered. Perhaps both are true.

Your customers have more choices and louder voices than ever before. It probably won’t shock you that, according to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs report, news of a bad customer experience reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a positive one.

However, take heart! The good news is that 55 percent of consumers are willing to recommend a company due to outstanding service over product or price. (source: Consumer Impact Report by Harris Interactive/Right Now, 2010.)

There is a direct link between sales and service. The real sale is made after you earn the customer. Once you get them in the door, it’s time for you to decide. Is it uphill or downhill from there?

There are three specific areas of customer service you’ll want to pay attention to: Technical, Hospitality and WOW!

Sisters, Service, and Sales

March 28, 2016/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Sales, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

Customer service that is focused on customer relationships will impact your ability to make sales and to improve your business.

Today’s post is by Kate Edwards, author of Hello! And Every Little Thing That Matters (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

There is a scene in the Tina Fey/Amy Pohler film “Sisters” that is hilarious. The scene takes place in the dressing room of a trendy shop where the eponymous sisters go shopping for dresses for a party they are hosting that night. They go to a boutique and try on a number of party dresses, but they are clearly clueless. Each dress the sisters put on is completely unflattering as they wear the dresses in all sorts of inappropriate ways.

The shop clerk watches them in deadpan horror and her face expresses what we are all thinking: each dress is worse than the next. The clerk, however, doesn’t help them put the dresses on correctly or offer them sizes that fit; rather, she says “that looks amaaaazing” in a completely flat tone. This character is the epitome of the lackluster clerk who clearly has been told to compliment the customers. No. Matter. What.

Service that is inauthentic, unhelpful or pushy is the stuff of horrible Yelp reviews and comedic movie scenes. But service doesn’t have to be like that. Businesses that take time to connect authentically to their customers will build a client for life. And businesses that ignore service in the sales moment are doing themselves great harm as sales are based on a human connection. Here are some easy ways to connect with your customers that will make the sisters of your business – service and sales – shine.

Establish Customer Quotas, Not Sales Quotas

Too many businesses focus on the number of sales rather than the number of customers. You must remember that customers make sales. Ask your salespeople to create relationships with every type of customer – not just the ones they already know.

LEAD – Listen, Empathize, Add value, Delight

February 29, 2016/1 Comment/in Books, Customer Service, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Mercedes-Benz hasn’t only figured out how to build great machines – they’ve also cracked the code on delivering world-class service. By following the LEAD approach, your organization can improve your customer experience too.

Today’s post is by Joseph Michelli, author of Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

The first time I met Mike Figliuolo – Managing Director at thoughtLEADERS (approximately 8 years ago), we were both listening to a speaker from the Ritz-Carlton.

Across that span of time the world of business has changed dramatically! Innovation and technology have proliferated, consumers enjoy universal access to the Internet, and people are continually connected to one another and their favorite brands through mobile devices.

Also in that time long-standing or innovative brands like Radio Shack, Blackberry, or Blockbuster have lost their luster or disappeared altogether. Conversely, other brands like Apple and Starbucks continue to remain relevant to a changing consumer.

As products have become increasingly similar and better, today’s great business differentiator centers around the “experience” in which products are delivered. As such, many leaders have been tasked to shift from product-centric to customer-centric cultures and strategies.

The path to customer experience excellence is a crowded (a Forrester Research study shows that 92% of leadership teams have it as a strategic priority) and tricky one (the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows consumer satisfaction approaching a 9-year low). So who is making this important transition effectively? What are some of the key behaviors leaders in these brands focus on to succeed when so many others fail?

Over the past several years I have been fortunate to work with the senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz USA and chronicle their efforts to take that iconic brand (known for over a century of commitment to innovative engineering and safety) and position it to deliver a customer experience befitting the brand promise “best or nothing.”

While the details of that transformation can be found in my recently released book, Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way, here are four key behaviors emphasized by Mercedes-Benz leadership and they come in the form of the acronym LEAD:

Magnetic: The Art of Attracting Business

February 1, 2016/0 Comments/in Books, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Sales, Social Media, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Growing your business is all about understanding how to attract and retain customers. There are several simple techniques you can apply immediately to make customers flock to your business.

Today’s post is by Joe Calloway, author of Magnetic (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

We’ve entered an entirely new marketplace for business with an entirely new set of rules. Businesses can no longer thrive following a strategy of going out and getting customers. Today we must become, in effect, magnets for customers and create a never-ending flow of new business that comes to us. It requires letting go of much of what we’re used to, what we’re comfortable with, and what used to work.

Let Cate represent a business. Cate can be in any arena of business – retail, business-to-business, consumer, industrial – it makes no difference. There are some new factors at work that can, if Cate gets them right, ensure steady and ongoing growth. Of course, the main rule is this: the rules always change.

The first factor that Cate must understand is that traditional advertising and marketing will play a much smaller role than ever before in creating business. They are still part of the mix, but the most powerful factor in buying decisions, whether business to business or consumer purchases of products and services, is word of mouth. Nothing else even comes close. It is the single most important element in the growth of any business. It is more powerful than any advertising and it should be at the core of Cate’s marketing strategy.

To be a magnet for business Cate must also change how she thinks about social media. It’s not what she says about herself on social media that influences prospective customers; it’s what her existing customers say about her. The Internet has changed the math on the power of Cate’s customers, be they satisfied or dissatisfied. They don’t tell a handful of people anymore. They tell dozens, or hundreds, or thousands. Today’s buyer of almost anything goes to the Internet to see what others think as they make their buying decisions. If the Internet, meaning everyone who posts their impressions of Cate, says “we love Cate’s business,” then her success is assured. She becomes a magnet for attracting business. If the Internet says “one star – stay away,” they stay away.

How the Three Box Branding Model Can Change Your World

December 14, 2015/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Sales, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Managing a global brand and bringing it to life at the local level has been historically challenging. A new model for setting a brand strategy then activating it and executing it can help overcome the challenges global brands face.

Today’s post is by Larry Light, coauthor of New Brand Leadership (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Three simultaneous forces affect how brands must be managed today: globalization, localization, and personalization. The collision of these three forces presents challenges and opportunities for marketers. This will require changes to the enterprise and mind-set structures as well as changes to the operational systems, policies, and processes used for brands. This means creating and implementing a more meaningful, relevant, systematic, disciplined set of strategies for effective brand building.

Globalization

Marketing globalization refers to the benefits of cross-geography standardization, reliability, and familiarity. But, to many customers it signifies homogeneity, loss of regional authenticity, and corporate domination. It is comforting to see known logos in shopping malls around the world, but people fear the loss of identity through excessive globalization.

Localization

Localization refers to a special sense of place designating local uniqueness, locally sourced, locally crafted, locally owned, regionally authentic, one-of-a-kind, and so on. Localization brings a sense of cultural, ethnic, economic, and social connection. But it can become too forced, cute, involuntary, obligatory, and kitschy. Just think Venice or New York City in Las Vegas.

Personalization

Leadership Culture Trumps Strategy as Game Changer

December 7, 2015/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Creating a great culture is a key responsibility of leadership. When you invest in building a strong culture, the business and financial results follow. Fail to do so and your business will end up in unpleasant situations.

Today’s post is by Diane K. Adams, author of It Takes More than Casual Fridays and Free Coffee (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Great leaders drive excellence in their organizations. They lay the foundation, set the tone and prove the catalyst for long-term bottom line success no matter the size of a company, the industry, or external economics.

These leaders’ secret to success isn’t their strategies. It’s the pervasive cultures they create at their companies with positive values-based attitudes, real actions, and strong commitment. In turn, their teams are energized and so are their bottom lines in good economic times and bad.

This connection between leadership and success isn’t abstract. Concrete results of stellar leadership include better productivity, less staff turnover, greater achievement of potential, better customer satisfaction, and better bottom lines.

The proof is in the numbers. A SHRM Foundation report found that companies with outstanding leadership have:

50 percent less staff turnover
10 to 30 percent higher customer satisfaction ratings
40 percent higher employee commitment ratings
Double a company’s net profit

Studies from other reputable organizations—including The Hay Group, Ken Blanchard Companies, Aon Hewitt, and Corporate Executive Board—found similarly positive links between stellar leadership and company successes.

The proof, too, is in the stories of extraordinary leaders whose winning approaches have helped them build successful companies.

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