New home for blog

I've moved my blog to a new place, but I've left some of my older posts here.

If you are interested, you may check out my blog here.

Thanks,

Douglas Pals
http://areyouresourceful.wordpress.com/

Does the appearance of employees affect your brand?

I have new company that applies fertilizer to my lawn. I started with them because we had a need and they had great timing when they came to my door to ask for my business. I am happy with the results and the relationship so far.

However, I had an experience with them yesterday that changed my feelings somewhat, and it got me thinking about brands, front line employees and how we form opinions.

Two staff members from the company came by at my request to look at some trouble spots in my lawn. One was the regular guy, let's call him Joe, and the other guy (we'll call him Tom) was someone I had not met. Tom was heavily tattooed, but dressed in his summer company gear.

As it turned out, Tom was the more seasoned fellow and had more experience about my trouble spots. Neither man proved to be an expert, but they cared enough to show up - points for them. We had a discussion about the source of the problem and possible solutions.

Tom further contributed to my opinion of him and the company brand by talking about 'coming home drunk and not being able to find his keys' as we were having some causal small talk while walking back to the front yard. Talk about walking right into my stereotype opinion of a tattooed 20 something. Ouch.

First impressions being what they are, I wondered about Tom's creditability and I began to question whether I had made a good choice in selecting this company to work on my lawn. All of that was based on one tattooed employee and his drunk comment.

Is it fair for me to judge on appearance? No, of course it's not. I felt shallow doing so, but we do it all the time. We form opinions about people and companies in all sorts of ways. And often, the first is what the person looks like and how well they represent themselves and their company.

Had Tom been very articulate and communicated to me that he was a subject matter expert in the area that mattered to me, and had Joe and Tom bothered to introduce themselves when they first knocked on the door, my opinion would have been significantly better. But, that is not what happened in this case.

In this age of self expression and as the working population transitions to a new generation, both employers and consumers are going to be faced with questions about staff and those that represent brands which with we do business. How do we make these choices as employers and as consumers?

I am going to keep using this company, but my opinion of their brand is less than it was 48 hours ago. When that happens, we all know that the door to leaving opens just a crack.

Make an appointment with your 'thinker' self

As we all get pulled in more and different directions are you saving any appointments for yourself? There are many things we all do everyday and we switch from role to role, often without thinking.

We have the administrator role - where we manage our relationships with co-workers and clients. Where we fill out our time sheet, process payroll, do monthly reports or manager our to do lists. You know the drill. This stuff is valuable, but I doubt anyone that thinks like a marketer looks forward to doing this stuff when they get out of bed in the morning. But, it needs to be done...and on time to boot.

We have the creative role - where you think of cool stuff to do that will sell more product or create awareness or move some type of change. The details that surround this are many and fun. As these ideas move toward implementation they begin to morph into the administration role duties. This is fine because it is great to see ideas turn into actions that turn into excitement, understanding or higher sales.

We also have the role that I'll call the thinker role, or at least we should. This is the place that I see many busy professionals - including myself at times - not making time in their day for strategy, consideration and general thought.

I know some make appointments with themselves for projects they need to work on or communications they need to write. However, seldom do you give yourself permission to sit and think about some of those ideas on your someday/maybe list or that idea you wrote on the mirror yesterday morning. That idea or those thoughts matter too...in fact they might matter more than getting that email sent before noon.

You can't be "on point" for every second of your work day, all week long. At least none of the great staff people I have had the joy to work with over the years could do it. So, make an appointment with yourself and keep it. It will allow you to do some deep thinking about your work, write your blog post or brainstorm about the mirror idea.

Make your appointment and keep it. You will be glad you did, and, if you are lucky, it will become the best habit you have.

The Great Disconnect!

A quick aside from marketing and other similar topics. On the surface this post might not appear to apply to my normal readers, but it does affect everyone AND it may impact marketer's ability to connect to customers in the future.

If you use a cell phone to talk, text, email or surf, did you know that most of time your call, text, email or web request is traveling on fiber optic cable under the ground...not through the air? It's true.

We all want to communicate when and where we want. That can be a voice conversation, an email, a text message or some form of video chat – just to name a few options. What used to be done solely from home can now be done from an iPad, a laptop or a smartphone.

Interestingly, all of these capabilities are still reliant on the network that keeps your home connected. Not the wires that actually come into your home, but rather what those wires are connected to, the broader network of fiber that stretches across town, the county, our state and our world.  It is that network that connects us all.

It is that underground network of fiber, which companies like Panora Telco, Marne Elk Horn, Walnut Communications and hundreds of others like them own which carry almost all of the wireless calls, emails to your smartphone, text messages and allows you to access the Internet from your wireless phone.

Wireless phones CANNOT function without an underground network to support them. This is a greatly misunderstood point by customers and more importantly regulators. It is the Great Disconnect!

The National Broadband plan, or more importantly the FCC rule making process currently underway, will have an impact on all of this because it incorporates changes to the funding model about how companies like those named above get paid to transport traffic. On the surface this is a good thing because changes are needed to adjust for the significant changes in the marketplace.

Deeper down is where the problems start to surface. It becomes apparent that DC regulators want to apply different rules for different areas. They are proposing to change the long held position that all American’s should have equivalent services, by giving more populated areas better services than you will be able to get.

Lest you think that 'only rural areas' will be affected, know that the FCC considers all of Iowa and many other rural states across the country as too rural to deserve the same services as a customer in, for example, New York, Washington DC and LA receive.

If regulators have their way, the cost recovery system will be changed in such a way so these companies will not be able to maintain the network that makes it all possible – including wireless services and broadband Internet. In addition, companies will not be able to bring expanded Fiber to the Home products which will provide huge bandwidth potential - up to 100Mb per home.

When you talk with Federal legislators, tell them to make sure the FCC treats less populated areas the same as metro markets. We all deserve the same platform for opportunities.

If you are interested in details go to www.thegreatdisconnect.org or talk with your local communications provider. Please help spread this message. Thank you in advance.

Why do your customers block you?

We have a lot of communications tools to use to reach customers these days.

And customers have a lot of ways to block or screen those messages from reaching them. Have you ever considered why that happens?

I cannot point to research (although I am sure it exists), but from my experience and from those I've observed, the reason customers put up walls is because they are getting messages they don't want - or at least not when and where they want them. Therefore, they develop ways to screen messages or block them altogether.

Certainly this is an evolution of sorts. When media and mass media was new, we purchased time to interrupt our customers to get them to consider our message/offer. When the messages get so abundant, customers go running for cover - with DVRs or ipods or voice mail, just to name a few 'screening' options.

I offer this food for thought today, so you can consider how you are communicating with your customers. Is it permission based? Can they opt in to methods of communication that they want?

All customer bases are somewhat unique and certainly all businesses are, so I encourage you to think about your customers and your business. Consider using your full quiver of arrows...even some that can be blocked or screened, but also be sure to provide communications options that customers have a voice in the 'how' and the 'when'.

In doing so, you will be remarkable and your loyal customers might just become positive word of mouth champions for you and your business.

Directions: Care. Demonstrate. Repeat

The signs are huge and everywhere. Sometimes you don’t even have to look for them.

You can immediately tell if a company cares about its customers or not. And, given a choice most of us will choose a company that thinks about making our life or experience better, over a company that does not.

And how is caring demonstrated: thousands of different ways, some small and some not so small. The details can vary by industry, but you know them when you see or hear them.

Examples could include: making it easy to pay your bill, allowing you to easily find the information you want on a website, having clean bathrooms, having loving frontline employees, or having clear signage.

What needs to be apparent is that the company has been intentional about considering what the customer experience is like AND then comparing that to what the preferred customer experience should be.

In reality, caring companies all come from one source – caring people. My initial thought is that you can’t teach a person to care…just like a basketball coach can’t coach ‘tall’. But I am reconsidering my initial thought, at least for now.

The only hope a non-caring person has is to slip through the hiring cracks and get hired by a company with a caring culture so strong that it engulfs them. But, if they don’t catch on quickly, the company could just as easily spit them back out.

Some might argue that not every person in a company needs to be caring. They might say that frontline, customer service and human resource staff are the only ones that need to be caring souls. They might say that accounting or senior management doesn’t need to care about customers the same way.

I would agree that they don’t need to demonstrate caring the same way, but they need to care – a lot MORE than frontline and customer service staff. Why? Because they make policy and then assure that it is followed. They develop training programs and they provide incentives to staff with praise and wage increases. They set the tone and build the culture.

So if you want to go far in a company or get your start in the world of work be sincere about caring for people and demonstrate how you HAVE and how you WILL bring those vital skills to your role.

Good IS the enemy of Great

Good is the enemy of GREAT.

Yes, I know Jim Collins started his book Good to Great this way...and that is the point.

All too often, in fact everyday, busy professional people that care about doing things well struggle with this idea.

You might or might not recognize the battle, but it is there.

Building something great is hard work. It requires a lot of effort and persistence...at a minimum. And building something Great may take a long, long time.

My wish for you and for me is that we recognize the choices that we are making and that we choose paths that lead to Great...not just Good.

Always remember that 'good enough' might be just that, but it is not Great.