Encourage Your Team To Be Great

One of the best lessons that I have learned in my career is that I cannot do everything myself.  Although sometimes it is easier to just do something myself, it isn’t always the best solution.  I have found that if you surround yourself with talented people that know more than you do, your leadership can help them shine and in turn, you will succeed.  Here are a few key things that I recommend doing to build strong teams.

Be Encouraging  – The old saying that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar is true.  With the stress and pressure of business today, team members sometimes just need an encouraging word to help them move forward.  We often take for granted how far a kind word can go toward your team.

Listen to Your Team – The best leaders that I have worked with are great listeners.  You don’t have to know all of the answers.   You need to ask the right questions.  I have learned more from listening to my team than giving direction.  If you have a strong team, they will appreciate when you listen to their point of view especially if it is different than your own.

Be a Role Model – Be available to roll up your shirtsleeves and help your team.  Many managers I have worked with have treated their team as subordinates and not partners.  They know you are their leader, you don’t have to continuously remind them of that.  They will appreciate you more if you are a team player instead of a dictatorial boss.

Respect Their Family Time – I treasure the time I spend with my wife and kids.  Why would I ever think that my teammates don’t treasure their time with their families?  Everyone needs time to deprogram, relax and recharge.  If a member of your team needs personal time, give it to them.  They will return with a more positive attitude.

Have a Positive Attitude – Negative people are hard to work with and more importantly to work for.  My mother used to say if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.  I take that saying one step further, if you can’t say something nice about someone, dig deeper and find something nice to say.  If you display a positive outlook, your team will feed on it.

Be Their Advocate – Nothing helps build a stronger team than having their back.  Just listening to your staff isn’t enough.  You need to take action on what they tell you and give your team the resources and tools they need to succeed.  That’s not to say that you can or should take action on every request that doesn’t make sense. For the things that do make sense, show your team that you are behind them and in front of them is very important.

Your team needs and deserves your appreciation, respect, admiration and leadership.  If you encourage, listen, be a role model, respect, have a positive attitude and be their advocate, your team will be strong, supportive, respectful and will follow your lead.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

What Are Your Customers Saying About Your Company?

When your customers call your company or go to your website, what is their experience?  Do they get their questions answered by friendly, helpful customer service representatives?  Do they feel that your customer service representatives are smiling over the phone?  Can they easily find the products they are looking for on your website?  What about their experience when they are disputing an invoice with your accounting department?

In our digital world with instant information and social media that can make or break your company by negative posts about your company, the customer experience is extremely important.  Here are some key things you can look for to give your customers the best experience they can possibly have and more importantly, they will tell other prospects about their stellar interaction with your company.

Positive – Was every customer touchpoint with your company a positive experience?  Whether they called your customer service or accounting department, looked for products on your website, emailed an inquiry to your company or opened their order once they received it, you need to make sure every time you touch the customer, they have a positive experience.

Memorable – What has your company done to make the customer’s experience memorable?  You want them to remember their positive interaction with you over your competitors.  Customers are busy and don’t want to deal with bad customer service.  There are too many competitors that can take your place. Make every time you touch your customers a memorable one.

Friendly and Helpful – Customers need to feel that you want to make their lives easier.  There is nothing better than talking with customer service reps who love what they do and you can feel that they are smiling while they are talking with you.  Everyone to talks to customers need to be professional, friendly and helpful.  Do your customers feel better about their experience with your company after they talk with your customer service reps?

Elevating Customer Experience  – Is everyone in your company committed to making the customer experience the best it can be?  Attitude is a very powerful ally. In several places where I have worked, getting everyone in the company on board with customer service that is “over the top” is mandatory.

How Likely Will Your Customers Recommend Your Company – Do your customers recommend your company to others based on their positive experience?  If you don’t know, ask them.  Customers normally have no problem telling you and anyone else who will listen about a bad experience they had with you.  Find out how satisfied they really are and fix what isn’t working right.  Social media is a great place to listen to your customers.  They are talking about your company, your products and how they were treated.  Listen to the conversation.

Relationships Build Lifetime Customers –  One of the keys to building lifetime customers is to create relationships with your customers.  People buy from people they know.  The more they know you, the more they trust you.  Ensure that your company is committed to having the best customer experience and the relationships will come.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit: ytang3 / Foter / CC BY-SA

How to Incorporate Social Media into Your Marketing Strategy

So what’s the big deal about social media?  Everybody is talking about it.  Companies need a presence on social media, but why?  Your company has done fine without it. Why should you invest time and effort in social media?  Which ones should you use?   Here’s a quick overview of some of the more popular social media platforms and how you can use them.

LinkedIn – Most effective business networking site on the internet.  If you want to find leads, everyone who is anyone is on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn lists names of executives of your prospects, so you can find the key contact that you need.  LinkedIn also offers advertising opportunities.

Instagram – Online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service.  You can upload photos or videos and share them on other social media platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr.  Information sharing is a key benefit of social media.

Flickr – Image hosting/sharing and video hosting/sharing platform.  Businesses use Flickr to upload photos of happy customers, their plant and operations, volunteer events sponsored by the company, etc.  Flickr is owned by Yahoo.

Pinterest – Photo and creative idea sharing network.  Pinterest is an excellent place to build your brand by “pinning” your product images and events. You can build a huge following of customers and prospects on Pinterest.  It is also a great place to drive traffic to your website.

Facebook – Not just for college student communication anymore.  Businesses, families, college students use Facebook as a way to disseminate information to select groups or the general public.  Facebook has several like-minded groups which provide an excellent way to target market.

Twitter – One of the most popular social media platforms.  You are limited to short messages of 140-character or less to provide quick updates to your customers.  In August 2015, Twitter removed the 140-character limit on direct messages (private conversations).  Great for announcing new products, press releases, events etc.

Snapchat – Short videos that tell a story.  The video disappears from one to 10 seconds after it is viewed, so businesses need to be short and to the point.  Snapchat can be used to announce quick sales, promo codes etc.  Snapchat is a fun platform, so keep that in mind as you use it.  Know who your audience is and get personal with your customers.  Give them glimpses of who you are with Snapchat.  30% of internet using millennials are on Snapchat.

Google Plus – Similar to Facebook, but with some differences.  Hangouts are unplanned meet-ups online, Sparks are one-stop shop for information where you can select topics to get information, Huddles allow users to chat with a targeted group of people, and you can use Instant Upload to instantly upload videos and images from your phone to Google +.  Google + is building momentum in the social media marketplace.

YouTube – The most popular video sharing site on the internet.  You can load how-to, product introduction or corporate information videos.  YouTube has a huge following and user base.  YouTube is owned by Google.

Slideshare – Slide hosting service using PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote and OpenDocument presentations.  It’s like YouTube for slideshows.  You can post and share slideshows about new products, your company profile, charitable events etc. Slideshare is owned by LinkedIn and is integrated with that networking platform.

StumbleUpon – This social media site helps you find unique and interesting things across the internet.  Think of StumbleUpon as a tour guide through the internet.  You can also submit websites that you like, see what others have shared, browse videos, photos and posts.

Tumblr – Tumblr is a blogging platform.  Let’s you share what you like with others that share the same types of things.  You can upload images, comments, etc.  It creates a custom webpage with your interests on it that you can share with the world.  On your dashboard, you can track your posts, blogs, images etc.

WordPress – WordPress is another very popular blogging platform that has been around since 2003.  I personally have a WordPress blog account.  It’s very easy to post and distribute articles.  Blogs are an effective platform to discuss new products, corporate strategies, white papers etc.

Besides building your brand and announcing new products, one of the greatest benefits of social media is it is where your customers and prospects are talking about you and your competitors.  Social media allows you to be part of their conversation. I can’t think of a better place to be.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit: ePublicist / Foter / CC BY-ND

Listen to Your Customers and Grow Your Business

I had to learn this valuable lesson the hard way.  We built an amazing website based on competitive research.  We reviewed several competitive sites and built a new site incorporating the best of our competitors’ sites.  When we launched the website, we expected our sales would go through the roof…they didn’t.  Our online sales were flat after launching our new site.  What did we do wrong?  We asked customers what they liked and didn’t like about our site.  The feedback we received was interesting.  We received comments like “You need to make your site more like competitor X.”  We did significant research of our competitor’s websites and thought we took the best of all of them to build a best-in-class website.  We were wrong.

I told our web team to contact every customer who provided input and asked them exactly what they meant by their comments.  Our customers provided incredible insight as to why our new site didn’t set their world on fire.  After reviewing the customer feedback, we only had one option…completely rebuild the website from scratch based on what our customers wanted, not what we thought they wanted.  That was the smartest thing we did.

We rebuilt our website, but this time we made sure that it would be successful.  Every customer who provided feedback became our beta testers of the new site.  They tested our site, provided more feedback and we continued to improve the site.  When we relaunched the site to the general public, our web sales improved immediately.  The customers who tested our site really appreciated that we listened to them to give them what they needed.

I have worked with and for some of the smartest entrepreneurs in the marketplace and I learned early in my career that they grew their businesses by listening to customers and giving them what they asked for.  This sounds obvious, but often companies don’t take the time to listen to what customers want and then take action.

One excellent channel to listen to customers is social media.  Believe me, your customers are talking about your company to other customers and prospects on social media.  They are also talking about your competitors.  I highly recommend that you join in on the conversation.  You will quickly discover what they like and don’t like about your company and your products.

Listening to customers, giving them what they are asking for, and quickly resolving any issues they have are keys to success.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo provided by garageolimpo.