One of the blogs that I follow with interest is Becky Carroll's Customers Rock! As a thank you to regular readers she has published an e-book with the title "Customers Rock!™ - How Businesses Can Make Sure Their Customer Experiences Rock".

The eBook is a compilation of five of Becky's favorite blog posts from the last 12 months.  she has also included the comments along with each post so readers can continue to follow the conversation; many of these were quite enlightening!

Topics include:

• Taking care of existing customers
• Customer or client?
• Tips for listening to customers
• Stories and the personal touch
• Measuring customer relationships

On the topic of "How to Take Care of Existing Customers", for example, she writes "We have to focus on two main areas when it comes to our customers: bringing new customers in and taking care of existing customers. The old idiom, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” comes to mind here.

"I like this definition from the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Third Edition, 2002).

The things we already have are more valuable than the things we only hope to get."

This handy little book has some gems that are useful to any small business and is worth a read.  As the book is freely available for distribution you can download your own copy by clicking here.

Life can be very painful at times, especially when legal rights and defences are concerned.  For want of documentary evidence a right or a defence can fail, often with painful monetary consequences.

In the last year I have had to assist several businesses to defend themselves against claims where they had kept insufficient or inadequate documentation to support their argument or position.  It becomes very difficult to construct a defense when the evidence is largely anecdotal and verbal. 

Often the person or organisation prosecuting a case can support their argument with written contracts, meeting notes, correspondence, diary entries etc, and even though the moral ground may strongly be in favour of the defense, their argument can fail through lack of documentary proof.  Procecution lawyers and revenue authorities thrive on these situations.

The fundemental tenet here, and one that business people need to adhere to at all times is "if its not written, its not real". 

Its the same with business systems.  If you want want the people in your organisation to perform key tasks in the same way every time to achieve the same results every time, your systems need to be written down.  Some benefits of written systems are:

1. There can be now doubt about what is required to be done
2. Routine tasks can be dealt with quickly and easily
3. Performance measures can be easily understood by all
4. Performance can be measured against written standards
5. Documented systems form part of position agreements
6. There is transparency about what is required.

There is a moral here.  Next time you don't get the results you expect or have to defend your position in a complaint or action against you, look for the written documentation to support your point of view.  Whereever you find a gap, remedy it, especially if a material consequence could arise from its omission. Without written evidence your life will inevitably become more difficult.

If ever there was a part of management that that has the potential to cause frustration, it is delegation.  So often the manager who delgates tasks to others complains of disappointment about results produces by delegatees that one wonders about what went wrong.

For some managers, delegation is an opportunity to pass work off to others that dont want to do themselves, in other words, to pass the buck to someone else and walk away from the problem.  This can be called abdication, and it inevitably leads to problems sooner or later.

This is not true delegation in any sense of the word.

The fundemental problem here is lack of responsibility on the part of the manager, and abdication from accountability for ensuring that the task is completed properly, within time, with the correct resources, and with a proper feedback mechanism in place.

A recent posting on the Slow Leadership Blog is headed "Delegation is Art and Science" defines delegation as:

"the act of assigning responsibility and resources for a task, holding or process to a subordinate".

This is followed by the statement "In effect, you sublet your work. Because they remain your subordinate, the task ultimately remains your responsibility. Since you chose to delegate this to them, you proactively decided they could handle the situation".

Now that's a whole different situation from the abdication example given above and it requires a whole lot more work on the part of the manager. This work can be summarised in three brief steps:

1. Communicate the task or responsibility.
2. Give the resources needed to accomplish the task.
3. Compare results to expectations then adjust.

Those three steps involve a lot of skills from the manager, both in terms of supervision and also in personal relationship between the manager and the delegatee.  The dynamics change over time as the delegatee grows their own level of skill and gains increased confidence in completing the tasks.

So, delegation is one of the key tools in the kit that forms the art and scince of management. If it is used badly, the results will be poor.  When used properly and with skill, the business gains and the parties to the delegation gain also.

I recomend that you read the full article on the Slow Leadership Blog as it expands on the comments above and provides some further context to the art and science of delegation.

So you want to grow sales in your business?

You have two main choices, sell more to the customers you already have, or find new customers to whom you can sell, or both.

Let's have a look at the second option. For the sake of this discussion we will assume for the moment that you have exhausted the possibilities for selling more to existing customers.

If you want more customers, where do you start? Let's start by looking at the customers you already have and ask the question, "how can I find more customers who are like my best customers?"

If your sales or accounting systems are able to provide you with the information, sort your list of "sales by customer" for the last year (say) in decending order from greatest to least sales.  You need to be careful here that the results are not skewed by a few large sales which are outside the norm of how you do business. 

Now look at the list and segment it into five equal groups by number of customers. This divides the number of customers into 20% segments. Total the value of sales for each 20% segment and analyse the results.  You may be surprised to learn that a sizeable proportion of you sales, maybe 70%-80% are delivered to your business by customers in the top 20% segment.

What about the next 20% segment? How are these customers different from the top 20%?  And the segment after that?

If you are able to segment your customers by trade or business type and sort sales by this type of segment, what can you discover here?  What about by type of product or service purchased? For people who are smart with spreadsheet software, sorting customer data with pivot tables can reveal some very interesting results, especially in a customer type/product type matrix. But let's not get too complicated.

Now it's time to ask some probing questions. Who are your best customers? What do you know about them? Where can they be found?  What similarities do they have? What do you know about their buying preferences?  How do I treat them that is different from how other customers are treated? What is it that makes them "best" customers for my business? Who else sells to customers like these?

There are many questions you can ask, and you need to ask them if you wish to discover the best approach to attracting them to your business. Some of those questions relate to demographic characteristics and other to psychographic charcteristics. Demographic characteristics are those that you can generally count, measure or observe such as genda, age, income, lifestyle choices etc. Psychographic characteristics are generally about behavoural observations such as emotions, likes and dislikes, choices and preferences, comfort and discomfort, and so on.

Using your new found knowledge about who your best customers are, you can now develop strategies to target other similar prospective customers in your trading area knowing more about what and how they buy, and what is important to them and the business relationship they want with you.

Its time to do some analysis and thinking now!

If you don't have the knowledge or resources to do this yourself, seek help from someone who does. "Cloning your Best Customers" is a foundational marketing topic in Full Spectrum Business Development coaching.

This posting by Carmine Coyote of the Slow Leadership Blog caught my attention. It neatly sums up attitudes to risk, which is very topical in light of the current credit squeeze resulting from the US sub-prime mortgage problems.

In her opening paragraphs Carmine says:

"Risk is one of the most misunderstood ideas in the world today—especially the business world. Despite all the time and effort devoted to risk evaluation and risk management, corporations constantly find themselves subject to far greater risks than they imagined.

The reason for this is rather simple: they confuse risk with probability and try to deal with it primarily by statistical or mathematical means.

Probability is, indeed, numerical. It’s the study of the likelihood that some event or outcome will happen—an attempt to understand the inner workings of chance.

Risk is something quite different. The easiest way to describe it is to say that risk is simply a substitute for knowledge."

Carmine argues that while risk can be assessed mathematically, the best way to minimise risk is to make business decisions based on knowledge - the more knowledge, the better the decision.

Risk can be assessed and amelierated as follows:

• knowledge - the more the better - that gives you as full a picture of facts, events, personalities, economics, politics, etc relating to the business decisions you make; supported by;
• mathematical risk probability calculations that attempt to rationalise the facts (knowlege) into numbers.

Relying on the numbers alone is not a safe option.

You can read the full article at http://slowleadership.org/blog/?p=186.

Quantification is a key process in Full Spectrum Business Development. Quantification includes both observation and calculation of key strategic and operational indicators.

Each year I try to take a skiing holiday with my wife. We have tried to make it an annual event for the past twenty five years.  In latter times, instead of buying new skis every couple of years we have rented so that we can keep up to date with the technology without the investment.  Not every ski rental company is the same however.

Fitting ski boots is a specialist task.  Many ski rental companies carry a limited range of boots for hire and try to sqeeze their customers into "nearest fit" or "one size fits all" boots. The consequence of this is sore feet and shins at the end of the day, and a miserable skiing experience by the end of the week.

Imagine the pleasure therefore, when after a break of four years from visiting out favourite ski resort, we visited our usual ski rental company to be greeted by friendly knowlegeable staff who were able to find our old records on their computer system with the exact fit and setting details for boots and skis for my wife and myself.  Nothing was too much trouble. Comfort was the key. Updates on new ski technology was offered and enquiries about whether skiing style or proficiency had changed. There was also an offer of ski or boot exhange if we were unhappy or wanted to try something different. Oh, and you could also pass your skis back in for any day you didn't want to ski and this would be deducted from your account.

You will realise of course that in ski resorts there are many companies trying to rent you equipment. We found this company ten years ago and keep going back to them. Why, because nothing is too much trouble. And they see hundreds of customers every day.

So the moral here is this:

Even though you may sell the same goods or services as your competitors, the thing that will differentiate your business above all others in your line of business is the experience you deliver to your customers. This experience doesn't just happen, it's designed to happen.  It happens through how your place of business is presented, how your staff are trained to deal with customers and their knowlege about what they sell, and much, much more. If you haven't done so for a while, take a step back from your business and look at it from the outside, from the customer's perspective, and ask yourself, "would I like to shop here?"

And by the way, the $20 voucher they gave me for renting went towards a very nice pair of ski gloves from their retail store that cost more than I intended to spend!

Johnothan Farrington always has something pertinent to say on his blog Leadership Turn.  Today's post is particularly worthy as it addresses an area that many businesses don't handle well - customer complaints.

The short summary at the end of the post reads as follows:

Complaints Are Opportunities:

Opportunities to do what?

• Evaluate how well you are doing
• Identify weak points in your system and processes and put them right
• See situations from the customer’s point of view
• Improve customer satisfaction
• Create long-term loyalty – handling disgruntled customers well often leaves them feeling more positive about your organisation than before.

What system do you have for handling customer complaints in your business?  Is it documented and easy to follow?  Do you have a person in your business dedicated to customer care?

Remember, a customer is not just a single transaction.  A customer is a lifetime of transactions if treated well. It costs less to keep an existing customer than it does to win a new one. 

To read the complete article click on the following link:

http://www.leadershipturn.com/complaints-are-opportunities/

This is very sound advice for all business owners.

One of the great experiences of my life happened when a friend who owned a café created an Opera night.  This night was made memorable by not only the food, wine and ambience that was created, but also the absolutely spine tingling magnificence of the singing.

One of the Opera singers that night was Simon O’Neill.  At that time he was waiting tables to pay for his singing lessons.  Today he is understudy to Placido Domingo at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.  Simon is due to perform for one night in Auckland and todays New Zealand Herald features an article on him http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=274&objectid=10456588.

In the article Simon talks about his conductor for his latest production Wagner’s Ring.  Simon talks of his relationship with the conductor for this production, Antonio Pappano.

An excerpt from todays New Zealand Herald:

“It was Pappano's baton which guided O'Neill as Florestan two months ago.”

"He's terrifying," is the answer when asked what the high-flying conductor is like to work with, "but he is also so kind. He wants more than you feel you can give, which is a good thing ultimately. He wants more legato, more tone, more piano, more dolce, more depth, more declamation.

"He is with you all the time."

What is the relevance of this? 

Well as coaches we aspire to be like Pappano, where we are a stand for our client’s success, and we are asking more of our clients than they believe they have to give. 

We want more insights, more systemic thinking, more inspiration, more excellent execution, more learning and growth.  Our role as coach is to set high standards and continue to demand that of our clients so that often they surprise themselves by producing results that they never thought possible.  Our role is to “be with you all the time”.

It takes something to set the standards of Pappano.  It is much easier to go with the “good enough” which is comfortable. To get to the highest level however, requires you to get out of your comfort zone and to push the boundaries.

If there's one thing that always irritates me its those extra charges that businesses put on their invoices to cover costs that should already be part of their pricing.  You know the sort of thing; statement charge, postage and packaging, cheque charge, and so on.

Think about it. If you add up all those charges that they collect from all their customers, you can get quite a healthy sum. And for what benefit to the customer?

Now I am as aware of the arguments offered for these charges as well as anyone.  For my sins I spent thirty something years in accountancy.  I also recognise that there are legitmate cases where these extra charge can be claimed, especially where the cost of delivery from store to customers is high, and the customer has the option of arranging their own pickup. But its those little extras that make me mad.

To me those small items are just part of the cost of running a business.  The business should therefore include these costs in their calculations when prices are set. 

In the case of the statement charge noted above, this was in addition to a healthy commission deduction for the collection of some rentals.  And those cheque charges.  I have seen customers offer a credit card instead, for which the cost to the business is higher and the charges are unable to passed on as an extra. The point here is this:

Each time a business annoys a customer by the addition of silly little extra charges which are for the benefit of the business only and not the customer, they are sending negative messages to customers that could cause them to take their business elsewhere.  It might seem a minor thing to the business, but it can cause a major reaction with customers.

Just think, if a twentyfive cent cheque charge can send a customer elsewhere, how much in future customer lifetime sales value could be lost to the business?

One the first things I do each morning is to check for new blog posts for blogs that I subscribe to.  One blog that I always get real value from is Carmine Coyote's Slow Leadership Blog.  This post on Time and Effort Saving Ideas for Busy People particularly caught my attention.