Direct link to our interview:

1. -- http://bit.ly/gMjonU
2. -- http://bit.ly/eLH5S3 

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Creative Ideas for Filling the Revenue Gap

You are in the wedding gown business; the car wash business; the hotel business.  B to B or B to C…….whatever business you are in, you have lulls and voids, or gaps during times of the day, week, month or year when your product or service does not sell because of various factors.  What are these factors? 

1.      Wrong time of the day for your consumer to buy from you (they are working, they are home etc).

2.      Not the right season to buy.  Not thinking about winter in August just yet. 

3.      The weather, tar balls or the devaluation of their 401K has scared them away.

Whatever the reason, you have times when you have a void or gap where selling hasn’t been an option before because customers just didn’t have a good reason to buy.     This article is dedicated to re-thinking how to sell in those time periods.  We needn’t accept current conditions as cast in stone.  Can we explore some ideas to sell stuff when we typically haven’t been able to in the past?

Thinking tactically, let’s pick on a service business like the car wash business.  When is it slowest?  I’m not in that business, but I would assume 9-noon and again 1-5 on weekdays.  You and I have seen “ladies day Tuesdays” at a car wash before, but what if the car wash came up with a broader audience to sell and market to at all slow periods, not just Tuesday’s?  A discount of course is the first thing to come to mind during those hours, but what if the car wash also/in lieu of said:

1.      Double points on a frequency or loyalty program during lull period hours?

2.      Have complementary businesses come into the car wash and do low key selling “seminars” on:

a.      Tire inflation: what’s best for your type of driving?

b.      Tricks for driving in the rain

c.       Caught in traffic?  Things you can do to make your wait productive

d.      Work out of your car?  Favorite car gadgets

3.      So the suggestion here is:  make your customers “want” to frequent your business.  Give them an experience vs a chore. Think of ways to create more value for your customers and to be thought less of as a commodity.

After you gain a following for these seminars you can broaden your subject matter to include handouts/speakers who can talk about “Life Savers”….things consumers can do to add value to their day:

a.      How to make a nutritious meal in 15 minutes

b.      How to not “over-coach” your kid’s sports activities

c.       How to get your children into college

d.      Health and exercise tips

e.      Best ways to use coupons

f.        Stress buster activities

Let’s pick on something a little more event driven…something like shopping for a wedding dress, buying a car or a boat.  I assume weekends are busiest for these places so the void is weekdays between the hours of X and XX. 

 Wedding dresses (or more event driven kinds of situations):  champagne and snacks reception during the void periods.  A montage of videos of previous weddings played to the right music to fill in slower moments of fitting the dress.  While the bride is being fitted for the dress have a wedding planner present those accompanying her tips on finding:

a.      Finding the right baker, photographers, and entertainers and so on 

b.      Have chefs visit the stores with samples of exotic foods, recipes (chefs during the day slow down too so this may fit their schedule perfectly)

c.       Invite musicians to play in your store    

Rules For Selling During Gap Periods

Some things to consider when planning events to drive business during slow periods:

1.      Get creative.  What would motivate prospective buyers to move out of the norm or habit and change for you.  It has to be a compelling reason and a strong message.

2.      Make your void period offers more of an experience and less of a transaction.  In doing so you will be making it harder for your competition to copy you.  That’s why price cutting alone won’t get it done in the long term for you.

3.       Help the consumer to make it a habit.  They join your club, or they receive loyalty rewards if they buy during void periods etc.

4.      Partner with complementary businesses to help you fill the void and they in turn will be compelled to network leads and business to you as well. 

5.      Package your products and services with complementary vendor partners so that they get “package deals” if they buy from all involved in the offering. 

6.      Stay creative.  Don’t just come up with one thing and stay there.  Challenge your staff (contest) or even your customers to come up with ideas for motivating kinds of events/activities that will excite them.  Do you want your customer base to use you often?   Surprise them with more than what they would expect from your solid service culture.  Keep them curious about what your next offer will be and they’ll keep coming back.  Customers will support businesses where they feel “connected”.  Build those connections by creating experiences for them that will lead to a long lasting, repetitive relationship.  Then watch your sales grow.

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Having been an entrepreneur for about 24 years of my 38 years in the business world, I have run into many other entrepreneurs and worked with many small, medium and big  business owners.  It has been interesting to see where they come up with solutions for opportunities and challenges and it goes without saying that the smaller the company, the tougher it is to come up with the ideas in order to come up with the best solution(s).  So where do I find most small and medium sized companies go for their answers?  In order of progression (but not importance) they go to:

1.       The internet.  Doctors especially cringe at this thought.  Patients are coming in all the time asking the doctor if their ailments are associated with the Guacamole epidemic that is happening in Peoria Illinois (I made this up so don’t throw away your avocados just yet).  Yep, some guy who professes to have done a study will tell you that catalytic converters on your cars make left-handed, blue eyed 6 foot males sterile and the next thing you know guys are having colored contact lenses installed.  The internet can be a wonderful resource….or not.  Sometimes we glean enough information to be really dangerous to ourselves and the well-being of our companies. 

2.       They call up their buddies.  We call up friends, associates and friends of friends and we ask them if they have solutions for our predicaments.  Some of this is good stuff and like the internet, although intentions are honorable, some of the advice they give us is bad.  Case in point, I live in a new loft that is housed in a building shell that used to be Piggly Wiggly’s world headquarters (1^st grocery store chain in America)  - built in 1916.  As the tile guy gets ready to lay tile all throughout the building he sees these smaller 2 inch by 2 inch tiles that are to go in key locations in the tile pattern, but he is not sure which side is the right side up.  So, he goes to his veteran electrician friend who has been in construction for quite some time now for his advice.  Without a doubt, he tells him side B.  You guessed it.  Tile guy gets done with weeks of hard work in the 110 degree heat; tile company sends the bill to the General Contractor (GC) and the GC is inspecting the work, without realizing the mistake either.  Designer happens upon the scene while the GC is bragging to her about how cool the tile work is and she agrees with exception to the 2 inch $8  a piece small tiles that are upside down.  My guess is if the tiles only cost 80 cents apiece he would not have cared, but at $8 per…..he wants them all cut out and re-laid properly or he isn’t paying for any of the tile work.  

3.       They buy a book or take classes in school.  Very few small business owners can or care to go back to school, but many buy books.  I don’t know about you readers, but too many business books are theoretical, strategic, academic…..not enough tactical advice or as perfect of a fit for my business situation.  I happen to L O V E Inc magazine for that very reason….real life, real business owners and very tactical solutions.   Some books are written by ghost writers….not even the person whose name is on the cover; some books are written by folks who have gone bankrupt and that would be great if they were writing about what not to do….but they are giving us advice on what to do. 

4.       They call up or go online with the Small Business Administration (SBA):  Maybe an A for the idea effort, but not so much in actual execution.  Enough said.   

Bottom line, net net….businesses of all sizes today need better intelligence so that they can make better informed decisions.  Enter “The Good Book of Business.”  A book that I am almost finished producing in concert with 31 other authors.  I certainly don’t have all the right answers, but I went to 31 others who do.  People that work in specific business disciplines every day.  CPA’s, attorneys, insurance people, consultants of all shapes and disciplines….people that don’t just write for a living, they work at it just like small business owners do every day, because they in fact are small business owners too.  Truth be told, the first reaction by most contributing authors was “I don’t know if I know how to write.”   Initially, they would go on to say “I know how to speak it and do it….but writing about it is another thing.”  Well, I went out and got a terrific editor and she melded their facts for your head and their stories for your heart.  Each author shared and bared all that they could to help you understand how to make the best decisions in 32 different business disciplines.

Accounting to advertising; branding to building a culture; legal to leadership; networking to raising capital; sales to strategic…..it is all in here….over 650 pages of baring all these authors could to give you the best tool they know of to help you make better informed decisions.  There is even off the beaten track stuff like:  how to go green locally and globally; how to jump start a new company; how to provide a “faith” environment while at work; integrity management and even advice on how to think and act more creatively. 

The best part is that every author included their bio, their jpeg and contact information so that you can contact them and ask questions specific to your particular situation.  This will be a free service for the remainder of 2010.  The website is under construction and the book is in final editing….all should be available to see and purchase by in early August.   Stay close to www.FreshRevenues.com or Amazon for more updates very soon.       

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Drive the Greatest Revenue Results By Using 3 Rules in Loyalty Sales Calling

Loyalty vs any other adjective or adverb you can come up with is the best way to approach selling your potential clients for immediate and long term results.  Here is the first example of loyalty in a known commodity, selling gas at a gas station.  Can we use this example in all selling situations?

You own a gas station and you know that the net profit % is very slim, so you can’t afford to lower prices, or offer freebies as an incentive to picking up and retaining new customers.  So how can you create a more loyal customer?  Most gas station customers are probably looking at price and location as the two greatest features….if the price is comparable to the next guy and it is on your way to and from work….then you will more than likely call this your gas station …..not much of a loyalty driving kind of proposition however.  What if the lighting at your gas station is weak, the window cleaning solution habitually dry, the pumps dirty, or the receipt doesn’t come out like it should?  Enough reason(s) to chase customers to the next station? Probably.  What if you as the owner or manager had these lighting and other operational fundamentals in place….but in addition to….you also made it a habit of walking the pump area, picking up trash and talking to your customers.  What would happen if you said “Hi, my name is Eric and I own/manage this station….if you need anything….I will be out here or just inside….thanks for using us for your gas needs.”  When is the last time you received this kind of a free benefit at a gas station?  Never or very rarely.  Customers would probably be blown away….they wouldn’t expect it.  This is the first step in driving loyalty….exceeding expectations.

Let’s try another example and one that I have heard repeated hundreds of times.  You are a 25 year old woman who is planning her wedding….something you’ve probably been thinking of from time to time for the past 20 years.  Like all women and men…you want this day to be perfect…..one of the very best of your entire life.  You are getting ready to make the most important phone calls that will determine how your special day will go and the area that more things can go wrong or right.   That’s right, we are talking about the reception facility.  How many places will the bride-to-be call to set up an appointment to meet with the catering staff to then determine which facility wins her trust?  Three, four, five?   Regardless of how many, she will more than likely have a conversation with an experienced wedding planner that focuses on 3 things….three very selfish things.  Ready?  Rates, dates and space.  Those will be the three things the catering veteran will want to know in determining whether she even wants this bride’s business.  This catering professional fields many calls a day, in a week, in a month asking the same kinds of things, so she has learned to streamline the calls to save herself time. She may be a veteran wedding planner, but has learned how not to have a customer centric approach to selling or driving loyalty with that soon to be bride.  So rule # 2 in driving loyalty with your potential and existing customers/clients is to make an emotional connection. 

Why should we be concerned with loyalty?  If you go into your wallets and purses you will see that you have a fair amount of frequency or loyalty program cards….some from competing brands.  The truth is, as consumers we are looking for more than satisfaction.  We want personal perks, surprises and value add kinds of goods and services.  It sometimes makes up for the bad service we get, but how much more loyalty would we be driving if the fundamentals are in place and on top of the stuff we were supposed to get…we got a surprise bonus.   Emotional connections with managers who go out of their way to show care and concern.  Surprises in the form of getting a delivery that exceeds my expectations as a consumer. 

As business owners and operators we already know that it is expensive to find new customers and even more expensive to fix things that they are dissatisfied with.  Our mission should not be to make our customers satisfied, but to go beyond satisfaction and straight to a commitment of loyalty the very second the experience begins.  Let’s go back to the catering director who fielded that wedding reception request.  Instead of focusing on the catering hall’s selfish rates, dates and space needs, she instead made that bride to be feel incredibly special by beginning the conversation with an incredibly passionate tone: “……well, Charlotte, let me just say congratulations to you and David on several levels.  First for your upcoming wedding and secondly, for choosing to consider us for your reception needs.  My staff and me are absolutely committed in every way possible to making this wedding day one of the very best days of your life…..”

Caring more, doing more and communicating that care better than any one of your competitors is what business leaders need to be doing.  Making the emotional connection and keeping the customer/client focus before our own selfish gains also solidifies and earns that loyalty.  So rule # 3 is putting customer needs before your own needs. 

Delivering the basics creates satisfaction, but does not drive loyalty…satisfaction is what consumers are supposed to get.  Loyalty comes from the added bonuses we talked about here. Delivering more than customers expect is the name of the game each and every day.  You can’t just wow them once…..each and every time you touch them and they touch you we need to drive loyalty  When you do, incredible things happen.  People buy stuff from you and they come back for more.

3 Rules of Loyalty Selling.docx Download this file

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Say the word salesperson to most anyone and what kind of a reaction do you usually get?  Yeah, not good.  Ask them to paint a picture of the “typical” salesperson with words and it ain’t pretty either.  Lastly, ask someone who sells for a living what their title is and it is almost never “salesperson”.  Instead you get “….I am the Midwest Senior in Charge of Important Programs Sales Czar….”  Even salespeople are ashamed of their salesman, saleswoman, salesperson titles…..they find that they have to have more adjectives tied to their sales title to give it more credibility.

 

So what things have salespeople done to get this bad rap?  Here are a few of my least favorite traits:

 

1.       They don’t really care about the consumer/client….they care more about their American Express

2.       They care more about their sales quotas than they care about the financial well-being of their employer.  This is how bad business is booked and the people who establish these quotas need to fix this    

3.       They focus too much attention on the product or service they are selling and not enough on the skills needed to be the best salesperson in the market

4.       They focus too much attention on the product or service they are selling and not enough on the real needs and wants of the potential and existing client

5.       They take for granted their “regulars”

6.       They don’t try to improve each and every day

7.       They don’t follow up sooner than they said they would

8.       They don’t meet with their clients right after they have just used their product or service to find out how they can be better

9.       They don’t try to help others (namely every single employee) in the office to be better salespeople

10.   They are not honest with themselves when they fail to make a sale and conduct an autopsy on their actions.  Maybe there was something they could have said or done to make it a better outcome and therefore sell smarter the next time  

As the owner of the world’s best and biggest sales and service training company we made over 20,000 shop calls each and every month to employees who were supposed to be selling at a high level.  Without the right training, focus and culture here is a typical sounding shop call……and again, we have listened to hundreds of thousands of them.  Let me set the stage for you:

 

If you are married (remember back to that day), about to be married, or see yourself getting married someday…..and you are the person trying to secure wedding reception space, then you are more than likely the bride to be.  This is going to be one of the most cherished and memorable events that will ever happen in your life.  It is supposed to happen only once in your life, so you want it to be perfect in every way.  You have three places in mind that would be in the running for your reception, so you call them all up to get preliminary information.  From here you will be looking for a face to face meeting to determine who gets to have the privilege of hosting your once in a lifetime celebration.  You call up the first place, second place and finally the third place and you are greeted warmly.  That is immediately followed up with tactical questions relating to Dates, Space, Rates.     Dates.  Space.  Rates.  That’s what the reception place wants to talk with you about.  Why?  Because they have done so many wedding receptions, meetings, banquets and so on that they become more like the robotic conveyer belt at an automobile factory than the “trustee and true beneficiary of someone’s most cherished lunch or dinner”.  It may be the last time all 4 of your generations will ever be together.  It is the first time Aunts and Uncles have seen each other in a dozen years.  It is the first and maybe last time both families will come together as one.  And the banquet facility wants to focus on dates, space and rates.  When you tell them that you are calling two more places they tell you that they hope you call them back…….see ya.  Because they all sound the same our bride to be thinks that this is the way this is supposed to go……until she hears someone who is heads and shoulders above the rest.  

I used a wedding scenario here but the same holds true for a single hotel room reservation to a business meeting…..same goes if you are a florist or a dentist.  Great salespeople love every opportunity to separate themselves from the rest of their competition by being better than their competition in the caring department, the appreciation department and the loyalty building department.  Great salespeople would congratulate this bride to be on her upcoming wedding and then ask her about how she has dreamt that this day would stand out in everyone’s mind as the greatest of any and all events ever held.  The great salesperson will communicate expert advice on the best practices learned by hosting over 150 wedding receptions.  The great salesperson knows that the dates, space and rates are important details….but take a back seat to the emotional connection that is needed to get a caller to come in for a site visit and from a site visit to an actual confirmed reception.  Great salespeople see people as people and not dollar signs.  And how many more receptions, meetings and other business dealings were just opened up to the audience that attended the reception of hers and his dreams?  Nothing happens until somebody sells something.  The world is starving for this……even and especially in a recession.       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I like to read mission, vision and value statements because I like to see how out of touch senior management is with the employees who actually have to do the heavy lifting in delivering these commitments.  Take for example the dry cabernet I had in the lobby of a 4 star Memphis landmark hotel last night….did the cocktail waitress know the statements and could she at least make an attempt at telling me what they were?  I lost a dollar wager in the process because the answer is that….I got what a bird leaves behind on a fence post.  Not her fault….management and leadership have once again failed.  This is especially frustrating for consumers because many times you see the words “world class” somewhere in the text.  I’d sure like to hear what others think when they hear the words “world class”.  If you are like me your first thoughts are solid gold fixtures in a hotel bathroom, 2 employees to every guest when it comes to service levels, Bentleys ready and willing to drop you off anywhere you want to go and the list can go on.  I heard of a hotel in the United Arab Emirates that claims to be the world’s first 6 star hotel.  When they first opened up they charged to give tours, so they must be special.  If that is world class, however, that leaves little room for the rest of us.  It probably doesn’t make sense for you to have solid gold faucets, because that is not what your bread and butter client wants….so can you be a world class provider of goods and services?  In my thought process you can and should attempt to be.

Have you done a good job of identifying who and what you are in your particular marketplace?  What you may want to be is not who you should be in some cases….so let’s make sure that you have correctly positioned yourself at the right price for the right value to the right consumers.  That is step one….do not pass Go and collect $200 unless you have identified this correctly.  Now that this is in order, can you begin to push your imagination to surprise the guest and drive more loyalty (not just satisfaction) by re-defining yourself in world class terms?  I’m not certain we know what is going on all around the world, but in your immediate world of 7 other competing hotels, travel agencies, timeshares, dentists and whatever business you are in….you can find out what it takes to be immediate world class.  How?

1.       You can be a guest, customer, user of your competition’s products and services

2.       You can shop them regularly over the phone, via e-mails/websites and heck, even by sending a note or letter to see, hear and smell how they handle their customers.  Look at every channel a consumer would use to inquire and/or buy

3.       Open your eyes and ears to other businesses outside of your immediate one to see if you can beg, borrow or steal an idea or two from them (see my last blog about the company CD Baby)

4.       Focus group or focus individual your customers and pry from them any and all suggestions they have to help you get better

5.       Ask every single one of your employees.  As one example, in addition to your customers and your wait staff…who would you want to ask what customers like and don’t like on your menu?  I did this job and nobody ever asked me.  Your dishwasher.  Why would they know…because he/she knows what people don’t eat because they throw the food away

6.       Read.  Read books, newspapers and magazines.  I read Inc magazine (I read every word from cover to cover) and find at least 2-3 new ideas in every publication….I get more from this one resource than almost any book I read. 

7.       Talk to your sister and cousin hotels, or whatever business you are in.  Put your ego in your back pocket for a little while and be humble and open up to suggestions and ideas from folks who would like to share their successes with you

8.       Never ever stop improving.  World class is a moving target and you are the one that needs to be raising the bar

Now when you are loaded for bear with new and fresh ideas and suggestions, pull together management and line staff and brain storm the newest definition of world class for your business.  Pilot or trial the new ideas on a smaller scale to see how they are received and work out the bugs.  I used to think I was hot stuff when I was a Sales Manager selling in downtown Chicago for the 4 best Holiday Inns in the world at the time (several were Hyatt and better quality).  I learned better when I moved to a “fixerupper” hotel in the Chicago suburbs in my first Director of Sales assignment, I really learned how to sell.  Right after my arrival (I remember it was summer) I went to the GM around mid-month to get an order of office supplies fulfilled.  He told me that we did not have any money in the budget and would have to wait until the first of the next month to buy anything.  Wait a minute….I have proposals and mailings to get out.  Tough, I have to wait was the response.  I went from a $5M operating budget to a $5 operation just like that.  So, I went into every storeroom I could find and all we had in excess was several year’s worth of holiday placemats…paper ones.  You got it, I typed our proposals on these placemats in a poem fashion highlighting the fact that the holiday season will be here sooner than we think and they had better reserve space while the going was hot.  The customers thought we did this on purpose, but we did it out of desperation.  On it’s own I would not say this was world class, but in concert with other unique initiatives we separated ourselves from our competition.  In that neighborhood we were world class.  I guess it could be said, and more importantly demonstrated, that world class can be physical and it can be mental.  Your drive, desire and need to make your employees and guests and customers as happy and loyal as they can be may be all you need to catapult you into world class.  You don’t have to have the greatest physical plants, or the biggest budgets, but you certainly need to be world class when it comes to your attitude and focus on delivering what it takes. 

Send me your thoughts on world class and what it takes please.    

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Generally speaking, we all know how bad service in America, and in fact the entire world, has gotten.  A simple question about your healthcare insurance takes how many computer generated transfers, greetings and menu driven options before you finally get to talk with someone and then…..you hope they understand English and will be receptive to your needs?  What about a phone call to the phone company of all places (phone = phone company) to ask a question about your billing or to change your service?  Is it just me, or are you also bothered by the automatic attendant asking you to type in your complete phone number, including area code, and when you finally reach someone they ask you what your number is?   Well, I have a surprise for you today readers…..I have a good story for once.  Yes, something so refreshing that I decided to write a blog about this simple, yet totally effective approach to customer service. 

Here goes. I am going to be speaking for almost a full day at an annual conference for a pretty cool hotel management company in about a month.  Doing my best to walk my talk I find out that the assistant to the Sr VP of Operations has recorded her own CD’s.  Now I normally bring a memory stick with about 100 songs on them that I will have playing as the meeting room fills up, during coffee breaks and certainly at the end when they are filling out an evaluation on the experience they just had in participating in one of my workshops.  Side note here….when I play “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong and thank each attendee by individually shaking each and everyone’s hand while they fill out the evaluation, I know I get goose bumps and the vibe I get back from them tells me that  they think it is pretty cool too.  Does playing Louis’ song help to get higher evaluations, I can’t say that I have empirical evidence to prove that I do…..but I do believe that their last impression of their time spent with me is a reinforced positive one.  So back to my music selection for this training/speaking  event…..I think how sweet would it be to surprise this assistant to the SR VP of Ops by playing one or more of her songs during one of the breaks.  How many of her fellow employees know that she sings…..I will soon find out because they all will hear it from me.  So I Google her name and sure enough there she is with a couple of CD options.  The name of the order fulfillment company is called CD Baby…an independent music distributor.  I buy the CD online and within minutes I get the following e-mail addressed from “CD Baby Loves You”:

Don-

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, October 7, 2009.
We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh...
We miss you already. We'll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.

--
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.

http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000
  
 
Now tell me that this isn’t the coolest little note that you ever saw…especially when all you are expecting is a standard (hate that word) confirmation note of some sort with a legal disclaimer attached to it that is longer than the message.   
 
This brings to mind an exercise that we undertook at my training company where I was bent on making every customer contact we had as memorable as this note from CD Baby.  We looked at our agreements and made them more user friendly, positive and fun to read.  With our billing statements we included balloons (not filled up), crayons and confetti when they opened the invoice statement.  Everything that touched our exterior and interior customers was looked at with a critical marketing and service eye.  How can we….that means you…..do a better job of separating ourselves by elevating even the most mundane of processes to make it special for our customers?  When you tackle this one, with your complete staff, you will have a lot of fun and come up with unique ideas that will make you stand out like CD Baby did for me.

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Improving Sales In A Recession

Top 10 things a hotel management company can do to grow their sales 

1.    Focus on low lying fruit first and foremost.  That is the business that is trying to come into your hotels and you are not making it as easy or as enjoyable for consumers as you should.  Phone calls into your inns should be answered in 3 rings or less using a unique greeting that is upbeat.like "thank you for calling our award winning ABC Hotel, this is Mark, how may I help you?"  If the caller wants information on making a reservation ask them what dates they had in mind and number of persons.  While checking on availability, ask them what brings them to the area, so that you can customize their benefits in a value proposition. Quote 4 BIG benefits (based on their needs and why they are coming), 2 rate/room options and then ask to confirm.       If they do not make a reservation ask a resistance question like: "I'm sorry, is there something I failed to mention..something else you may be looking for?"  When they tell you use fallback options and ask to confirm again.    A small hotel will generate $100K more in highly profitable incremental revenue; medium sized hotel $200K and larger resorts 500K-$1M more a year.

The same holds true of the e-mail requests that you get and even your website needs to follow this formula when promoting your inns.   

2.  Website SEO (search engine optimization):  Speaking of websites and low lying fruit, make certain that not only is the part readers see is engaging and compelling, but also make sure that meta tags (the keywords that drive lookers to your site) are done correctly.  Blogs and fresh content added on a regular basis will help keep you current and your organic placement higher when people are searching for hotels that can accommodate their needs.  50% of the people who hit your website will also call your inn direct so make certain that #1 here (low lying fruit) is cranking out conversions in the 70-80% range.     

3. Branded hotels should work all of the programs within those brands to their maximum advantage.  RFP's (request for proposals) is just one example..make certain your brand national and regional sales teams are promoting your hotels.  Loyalty and frequency programs; special promotions and many other revenue generating initiatives are being pushed out by the brands but not enough franchisees and member inns are taking full advantage of them.   

4.  Sales Blitzes.  A sales blitz is a concentrated amount of sales calls made in a short period and can uncover business you did not even know was in your own backyard.  Use line staff, sales staff and department heads and make 20 calls for each team of two persons X 7 teams X 2 days and you will have made 280 personal calls which will generate hot and medium leads.  Everyone sells in your hotels…..everyone starting from the CEO and all throughout the ranks.  If sales blitzes fail they usually fail in the follow up, so make certain you organize hot, medium and low priority follow sales based on revenue potential.  Trace them and follow through.  

 5.   Feeder Market Sales Calls:  Contact non-competing hotels in markets that feed business into your market.  Share leads from your files and ask them to do the same.  So if you are located in Columbus Ohio, you will contact hotels in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton and  Toledo for organizations that they feel would travel to other cities within Ohio.    

 6.  Expand the number of market segments you are pursuing.  SMERFES (Social, Military, Ethnic, Religious, Education, Sports) have the potential to use your hotels during lull periods.  Funeral homes; churches; AAU sports groups; rental car counters at the airport and overflow from your competition..this list can be incredibly powerful.  Expand your reach.  Federal government; state government; Travel Agents; Convention and Visitors Bureaus; Chambers of Commerce; Business Development offices; Courts System (juries); National and State Associations;  hospitals and medical; colleges (parents weekends, visiting speakers, sports teams, continuing education programs) and the list goes on.  Get creative and you can and should be more things to more people.    

7.  Your Competition.  Your competition may be filling up a few times and you are not..get the night auditors and B shift employees promoting your hotels before any others.  Bring them a sub sandwich, pizzas etc to keep you top of mind.  Take their sales people to lunch and get them to refer business they cannot or do not want to book.   

8.    Owners and General Managers Make Sales Calls.   Clients and potential clients are impressed when the top dog comes to visit them.  You need to make certain that existing clients remain loyal so go see these clients regularly.  Ask them if there was one thing you can do, no matter how small, what could you do to improve service and loyalty.    

9.    Make sales calls on the Market Managers from the various OTA's.    Priceline, Expedia and so forth have field based managers who can tell you what it takes to get their business on specific days of the week.  The rate may be lower than you would like it to be, but it will be when you need business the most.

10. Marketing initiatives promoting lull periods should be implemented.  Weekend packages; wedding and honeymoon packages; family attraction packages are the sort of thing that need to be explored using all of the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, www.MeetUp.com) and all of the conventional channels as well (radio, newspaper and other print media).

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If you make a lot of personnel decisions, or give advice to a wide range of people, then you are bound to run into a few that don’t agree with your viewpoint and I’m OK with that.  It comes with the territory.  What really frosts my bacon, though, is when you get feedback that is so out of context of what you are trying to communicate….it has to make you wonder.  Now, it is good at the end of the day to get this feedback even if you totally disagree with that other person’s viewpoint…it’s as American as it gets to give and get advice….regardless of how contrary it is.  I am no exception that I am thankful at least somebody is listening and thinks strongly enough to send a note or call you up to say they think you are a moron.  But, you would have to be a moron if you take these sometimes “left field” criticisms lying down.  Which is what this week’s blog is about.  How can some people totally misunderstand your message when the plethora seems to get it….but yet, where did these others come from.  More importantly, should the real question be “did they not get it, or is there something run amok here?”  I am going to file it under the “hidden agenda” department.    Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, hidden agendas.  How many times has someone’s personal intent sucked the true potential out of a business deal, a merger….heck even a marriage I guess you could say?  We all have personal agendas, but what I don’t like are the ones that run contrary to the overall success of the mission.  The vision.  And the values of your company or your organization.  The kind of personal agendas that are so contrarily strong and so focused that they cripple an effort.  I don’t care how many strategic planning sessions you have or how many action plans you update still seems to cripple the goodness that these plans meant to deliver.

Thank heavens I had none of that in my company or where I was the leader of a department.  Right, who would I be kidding if I did not admit this kind of thing goes on everyday and everywhere to some degree…..BUT I do think that I was able to manage the “hidden personal agendas” and even manage to get them to the surface so that they were hidden no more and I could deal with them.  To keep personal agendas, hidden or not, from running contrary to the mission, vision and values is what leaders and managers need to dedicate time and energy to.  When I go in to conduct training workshops and especially when I take on a consulting assignment, it is the second thing I focus on….because if I don’t, it could lead to a less than stellar result.  The first thing I focus on is what leadership is asking me to do….what is the ROI they expect from me?  This brings to mind a few previous consulting assignment stories, and I share them so that you can reduce the amount of hidden agendas that can destroy what you are trying to accomplish:   

1.                   There was the client who called me up and said “Farrell, we have a cutting edge, world class sales organization.  We want you to come in and not take them to the next level, but we want you to take us 20 years into the future with our selling efforts because we think we are ready for that”.  Now who wouldn’t want to take on that kind of a challenge…especially me.    So I ask the woman who called “what makes you think that your salespeople are ready for that kind of adventure?”  She went into explaining how many weeks of intense training each of her salespeople had undergone and how they spend months in the real world with expert sales people learning their trade and honing their skills before they were finally ready to be cut loose and sent out to conquer the world.  It was quite impressive and I had never heard of an organization spending as much time, money and resources to train their people as she had described.  Long story short, I do what I always do….I shopped these sales people to get a reality trip look at how they really performed.  You guessed it, they didn’t exactly fail, but they sure did not sound a whole lot better than most of the thousands of sales presentations I had heard over the years.  So, where was the disconnect here?  Why did this sales leader think her people were ready for skill sets that were so much more advanced than they were ready for?  One word E  G  O.  An ego run amok I like to say.  Her personal not-so-hidden agenda was to be able to say to her peers, her drinking buddies, her bosses, maybe even her clients that she had the best bar none sales force that one could find.  I’m good with that mission, but to be blind to the fact that her people still had fundamental selling issues that would have turned this “futuristic sales force” into a huge futuristic sales farce.  Her agenda, although a good one needed to be tempered with a dose of reality, better planning and better executing.  Lesson to be learned here is that it is good to want to be the best, but walking it and talking it are two different things.  Leaders, egos are very good things when they are managed properly.     

2.       Not really a story here, more like my commentary on how employees (from leaders and all through the ranks) are not working hard enough….understand that I am speaking very generally here.  With technology as readily available as it is to most of us, how hard is it for you to send someone an e-mail and say “…hey, I know you called today and I’m sorry I did not get back to you.  Can I call you after hours or sometime Saturday morning, because I’ve got one crazy week here”.  Instead, we don’t call someone back, or we send them an e-mail saying “I’m traveling this week and will need to get back to you next week”.  Now how stupid is that note?   Why don’t you just come out and say “…hey, you are not worthy of a phone call back so wait until the world does not need my services for awhile and I’ll squeeze you in sometime next week….”  With companies struggling, with people being laid off, with wages being rolled back…..people….we all need to understand how valuable it is to take care of our current clientele and how important and hard it is to grow one’s business today.  That’s why we have to all work harder and smarter.  And leaders if you don’t do it then neither will the people that work for you.  So the hidden agenda here for me is that people that work for you, heck maybe even you have personal agendas that are getting in the way of sending that extra e-mail, making that extra phone call……that extra effort to say to someone “you are important and so important I will take your call from my home or from my hotel room at night”.  Now more than ever everyone needs to put in this extra effort.  How impressed would a client of yours be to know that you were at your son’s soccer game and you made a call to them to follow up.  I know I know….work/life balance issues.  If we all don’t make these extra efforts you may not have to worry about the work part of that equation.    

3.        Things we can do to root out hidden agendas:

a.       Every department head meets with a direct report once a month:  you are discussing action plans and scoreboarding (measuring results to plans); you are talking about strategy and making sure you are on target or better; you are prying out little issues that could jeopardize the mission and you are asking for HONEST  input no matter how it may hurt your feelings.  Lastly, you want to spend some time talking about those things that are most important to that employee.  Career plans, needed professional tools and yes even unavoidable personal issues that may affect their job even though they and you don’t want them to.  Care leaders.  Care managers.  Help them when and where you can.  Sometimes there is little you can do to help them with certain personal issues, but at least afford them the courtesy of showing them you care for them.  If you have to fake it, go getter a different job because your hidden agenda of not caring is a cancer that will spread.  I believe that employees take on the personality of their boss.   True caring is what some of the best corporate and social cultures are made of, and that’s what will reduce your turn-over, and that’s what will help you to maximize in a recession and come out of it a much stronger company or organization.

b.      Share the truth about your company/organization’s health:  If you are experiencing drops in revenues and quality issues are hurting the company then let your employees know.  Lead by example in asking each and every one of them that you need their help and their EXTRA effort in order to be able to continue to provide for them and their families.  Show them how they can do their part to improve.  They need to know that you and your company does not have a hidden agenda.  Too many companies have left their employees in the lurch and they need to know you are not one of those companies and you as a leader will lead the way to a stronger company…..but you can’t do it without them. 

c.       Be daring:  One of my other beliefs is that employees want to work for a dynamic leader, a cool boss.  Your employees are starving to go home at night and over dinner tell their husbands, wives and their children what crazy thing (in a good way) their boss did today.  They want to laugh about it, want to share how they are a part of something very cool….even though it is serious fun.  Jobs are at stake, a company’s future viability is at stake….but the company can still laugh, have fun and put people first.  No hidden agendas here. 

So back to finishing the story about this e-mail I received late last week that said her sales employees would not be attending any more of my webinars because they felt that some of my tactics were not ethical and I was too self promoting.  Let’s tackle the easy one here first….If you don’t promote yourself, who will?  And as for webinars and even this blog…..if I don’t get business as a result of writing them, then how long will I be able to write them? Of course I am self promoting….but I don’t think I do it enough quite frankly.  Now for the “not ethical enough for them” part….read 3b and 3 c here.  These are tough times and for my clients to win, and their employees to win, and for these employees family members to win…..then someone has to lose.  There is only so much business out there today.  I think I saw a statistic the other day that said hotel occupancy in America will finish at around 53%.  That means someone will finish at a respectable 70% but that also means that others will have to finish at 25% occupancy.  I want my clients to finish at 80%.  They deserve it because they are spending good money on me that they could be spending on employee wages instead.  If I can help my clients to steal business from undeserving competition, then so be it.  I don’t fight fair and I don’t apologize for it.  Neither did our grossly outnumbered founding forefathers when they would hide in the woods and shoot at the properly aligned British troops who wanted to fight by the rules….they wanted to fight fair.  I don’t break the law, but I also know that I subscribe and promote what some would say going too far in the ethics department to secure business.  Somebody better do it or else every client will finish at 53% occupancy which means they all fail.  My advice to this corporate person who sent me the e-mail….find out what their hidden agenda items are.  Shop them to hear and see how good they are or are not.  I am betting they need to listen to someone, maybe not me….but someone who needs to make them better at what they need to be doing.  That is the bigger issue here.             

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I just now calculated that in the last 20 years I have asked over 262,000 people the same 2 questions.  The first “ is the overall service level in America getting better or worse?”  I can count on two hands how many said it was getting better.  My second question is “why is it getting worse?” and I usually get responses like “they are not paid enough to get good help”, or ..….”kids today don’t want to work.”

Everyone’s greatest challenge is finding good help…even greater than the challenge of finding new revenues.  I hear it from everyone and everywhere.  So here is what I did with a major hotel brand that has around 3000 hotels in the United States.  They hired me to speak to all of their owners and managers in 5 speaking sessions lasting 90 minutes each.  5 of the same sessions delivered over the course of 3 days…I don’t relish those kinds of gigs, but I love the brand guys behind this company and here was an opportunity to get closer to the people that make things happen…the owner and the GM. 

I had a table set up on the stage complete with china, glass and silverware.  In each of the audiences of 600 (without telling them why) I asked for a husband and wife volunteer from the audience to come up on stage with me.  Not surprisingly I did not receive a single taker.  Then I offered $20 to any couple who would come up on stage and I was bombarded with my pick of the litter.  So here come the husband and wife not knowing what they were getting into.  I asked them to sit at the table and I was going to wait on them.  I asked what their favorite restaurant in the whole wide world was and I was sorry to hear that TGI Friday’s was the overwhelming favorite.  I set the situation for them and the audience….here you are Mr. and Mrs. Customer sitting in your favorite restaurant being waited on by someone who really impresses you. As a waiter  I tune into you and turn you on.  We laugh, I am prompt, I make good suggestions and I help make this evening’s dinner memorable.  Mrs. Customer get’s an idea that she shares with her husband.  She says “honey, our waiter would make a very good front desk agent and we have several openings right now…..do you think he would be interested?”  Mr. Customer agrees with his wife.  Stop.  Now I ask the audience and I ask my staged couple to now tell me what they would say to me, this stud waiter, that would compel me to want to work at their hotel (could be any company).  First the couple…..tell me what you say or ask me and I am ad libbing here, but it usually started like this:  “thank you for the great service you gave us tonight.  My wife and I were talking about you and wondering if you would like to work for us making more money?”   As the waiter I would ask them “can I really make more money?”  And the husband would usually respond by saying “absolutely”.  Now I come out of character and ask Mr Customer/ hotel owner if he knew that as a very good waiter that I make over $65,000 a year….is it possible for him to pay a desk agent more than that?  Some would say yes they could….and I would retort really?  They would immediately back off and the audience would have a good laugh over that one.  OK, back in character…..try again Mr. and Mrs. Customer/hotel owners…..why would I want to work for you?  Cutting to the chase here, in all 5 sessions the couple I was waiting on fumbled badly.  I would then turn to the audience and ask for help and they were not much better.  Everyone was trying to sell me on the idea of working for them.  I don’t think this approach is working because service in America is still getting worse and employers still say that their greatest challenge is the inability to find, hire and hang onto great help.  Here is a new approach and is simple to do.

1.        Always be looking for talent.  Supermarket, gas station, restaurant….instead of thinking negatively, start thinking positive.  Be looking for people that get service and are natural people persons.  In most jobs you can teach them how to work the computer and all the other operational duties…..but teaching someone how to be comfortable and engaging with the customer is the tougher challenge.  Starting this very second STOP saying you can’t find good people.  They are out there, but they are indeed the minority….find them.   

2.       When you find a candidate you like, offer them your business card and ask them if they know of anyone else that is as good as they are?   This way you did not ask to have them interview directly, they will ask you.  This will help soothe a little of the pain that their current employer will feel when they lose them to you.

3.       If after asking the candidate if they know of anyone as good as them looking for work in your field and they say they might be interested, do not try to convince them to work for you while they are still waiting on customers or engaged in their current job.  Instead, ask them if you can meet for coffee later or the next day to talk about opportunities you have in your operation.

4.       Do not look or sound desperate….even if you are.  Be calm, professional and caring.  This new hire is an investment.  Treat him or her as such.  You did not buy your business or take your current job in a panic did you?

5.       When you meet for coffee thank them for their time.  Start off by asking them what their goals, aspirations and what are those things that are most important to them in life.  It’s been a few years now, but I remember studying a survey Accor Hotels did with their global Gen X and Y staff members.  They asked them what the 5 most important things to them were…now keep in mind this was a global survey…many countries involved.  Consistently they said that what mattered most was their free time, what they would do this weekend kind of thing.  Second was their concern for their family and friends.  Third was how they were going to find the money to pay for #1.  Career was #5.  As Boomers we want to slap them upside the head and tell them to get a clue….it’s a tough world out there and they better wake up and blah blah blah.  There are some major global events that skew the way each generation sees their world and subsequently their lives.  The depression; WWII; Vietnam; Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King shootings, Watergate and Nixon; the Berlin Wall have changed the way we prioritize things.  Well, for X’ers it just may be 9/11.  In some cases they may feel “why worry about next year when next year may not come” kinds of effects. My suggestion to you is to not try and change their minds about what should be important to them (unless they ask), but to instead take what they say very seriously and see if that fits with your needs, your preferences and your culture.  What is important to them is what you should focus on first……not you telling them that you will pay them more and this is good for your career etc.  It would be like telling a corporate client that you offer free ice…..focus on what is important to your potential next best investment…this employee.        

6.       Have your value proposition already worked out ahead of time.  Give me (the potential employee) terrific reasons why I should risk leaving a good job and work for you….in some cases for less money.  There are many ways to approach this, so let’s try a few here:

A.      You said that your free time is important.  That being the case how would you like to have a schedule made out so that you know when you will have off days 3 or even 4 weeks in advance?

B.      In jobs where you can do this….try talking to them about flex time….as long as the job gets done well, you don’t care when  they work.  This is especially great for single parents; students; parents who want to be home when their kids are and others looking for a 2cnd job.

C.      If the candidate does have career aspirations make it clear you would rather have a sensational 1 year of them working for you than 3 mediocre years.  You will work hard for them to get them placed in the career they want.  You will meet with this and every employee monthly and give them tips on how to be the person they want to be.  Share articles, books, have them meet someone in that profession…take a personal interest in each and every employee.  If you can’t do it all, have the department heads do this with their direct reports.

D.      CARE more than any other employer.  Tell me that employers do that today….they don’t.

E.       Be careful not to sell them.  You want to be honest and appealing….but if you have to sell them on the job it probably will not work out.

F.       If more employers treated their employees like volunteers they would be so much more successful.       

7.       If you hire them, then orient them the right way, train them the right way and most importantly, reinforce things the right way.  (how to do that is a whole new blog or two).

There is so much more you can be doing to invest in your culture, but hopefully you found some pearls that you can use to liberate employees away from someone else who does not care as much as you do.  Somewhere you make them happier and more successful.  You win, they win and your customer wins.

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I read a piece in a hotel trade magazine this morning where the CEO was touting their many brands, in their well heeled mega brand, as being the right brands at the right time for a recession.  He said that consumers were trading down from expensive luxury brands and settling into his moderately priced brands and because their frequent loyalty program was signing up new members at a brisk pace , the job ahead of them would be to hang onto these new consumers when economic times improved.  He led the reader to believe that they were off to a good start because of the growth of their new members joining their loyalty program.   I think this CEO is kidding himself and trying to kid a few of us in the process.  How and why would I make this claim?

1.        I agree that consumers are being forced by their employers and by their own budgets to trade down in price and in doing so trading down in brand usage.  I also believe that in trading down to multiple less expensive brands they are also signing up for all frequency and personal benefits driven programs .

2.       If you ask the average hotel traveler to open up their wallets I venture to say that you would find that they belong to an average of 8 loyalty programs and some of them are with competing brands.  We did this exercise with large audiences a few years ago and found this to be the case.

3.       Just because a consumer joins a loyalty program does not make them loyal.  For too many of these programs they are trying to “buy the business” with personal perks.  I’m OK with that if they back up the personal perks with sound service and sales training initiatives that raise the levels of service that these brands typically deliver……but they don’t.  They offer more talk than walk.   

4.       This CEO is right to say that the mission is to keep these new traded down consumers.  The problem is that they are not doing enough to hang onto them and will wind up losing them once the consumer can afford to go with better options…..or if and when the consumer finds out like priced options with comparable loyalty programs exist that deliver better price/value.  So good operators, here is your chance to liberate these traded down consumers into your business, but you better get going right now in doing so.  Don’t waste another moment on taking advantage of what a good recession has given you.        

How can you steal business from your competition?  Read the previous and future blogs that are listed on my website www.FreshRevenues.com  I am giving you free advice before my new book “Ethical Theft” comes out in a few weeks.  In the blogs and in my book I give you tactics on how to acquire the info you need and how to make a superior sales call, a veritable 1-2 knock-out punch.  Now that you have this new client, how can you make this client more loyal?

1.       From the very second you first meet this new consumer/client you will care more and you will communicate better than any competitor has before.  Note that I did not say you had to have a superior product….you don’t to liberate….just the better care and communication skills to start with.  Your competition may have a better physical plant than you but nobody…..I mean nobody should outdo you in the care and communication department.   If you have to fake caring, then go find another job working for the DMV.

2.       When I say care more, I mean take an interest not only in the business and their company, but also in them and eventually their family and friends too.   Find out what their hobbies are and send them a book, clip out an article….do something they would not expect that is more on a personal level than just a professional one.  Take a real interest.  Help them when you can.

3.       Make certain that your staff (not just you) is clued into little differences that make a big difference with your newly found consumer/client.  You need others on your staff tuned into this individual so they he/she can get more turned on.  Tune in/turn on. 

4.       To communicate at a higher level, make certain that your staff knows about the 4 personality styles and how to adjust their tone to “personality partner” with your consumer.  The golden rule says to treat others the way you like to be treated and the platinum says to treat (communicate) like they want to be treated.  Platinum trumps gold.  Find out how and how often your consumer wants you to talk with them.  As often as you can every time you communicate you are offering better ways and new ideas.  Each time your consumer hears from you it improves their life in some way.      

5.       Help your consumer to grow in their business as well.  In my latest webinar I told you the story about our “Salute to Industry” and how we made this work for our top 6 clients and top 6 potential clients.  In short, we would dedicate visible high traffic space in our hotel for our clients to display their wares for a full month along with a poster or sign that told the story about what they do and how they do it. Thousands of our guests would see this and take an interest in it, hopefully calling that company to use their services.   At the end of 30 days we would have a reception around their display with all the big dogs from that company to thank them again for their loyalty.  We were thanking them for their business by providing them with an opportunity to increase their business.  We would host 6 months of existing top clients and 6 months of the biggest potential clients we wanted to steal from our competition.

6.       Never calculate the value of your consumer 1 usage, 1 stay or 1 function at a time.  Find out what their history tells you their worth is.  Find out if these plans will increase or decrease in the future.  Calculate the worth of a consumer over a lifetime of usage.  I built a big portion of a million dollar home from the shelves of a Home Depot….do you think they know who I am?  They haven’t a clue and I am here to tell you that I used the same AMX card each time.  How hard is it to track a guy like me?   If they knew what a lifetime of purchases from me were worth they would not have lost me to Lowes.  Come to think of it, I’m not totally happy with Lowes either so I am up for grabs.        

7.       Never ever take your consumer for granted.  The value formula reads V=D/E…or value is determined by dividing expectation into the delivery.  Putting numbers to it, if as a consumer you are expecting an average consumer experience from a McDonalds…say a 5 on a 10 scale and someone delivers a 9….to you that is terrific.  But, you have to exceed expectations each and every time….not free stuff….surprising stuff. 

8.       Just the sheer act of trying puts you in a category with consumers today as superior to most service encounters they come into contact with.  So, don’t be afraid to try and wow your consumer….even if you don’t deliver they will be impressed you tried.  That’s how starving we as consumers for better service.

9.       Know what your competing sales people do and say to win business…be better than them.  Know how your competition services your desired consumer and better the experience. 

10.   Your sales and service culture is the best selling benefit that you have.  If you don’t have a superior culture to your competition then you better make it so.  You and your people drive your culture and culture beats out the latest commodity (flat screen TV’s, free breakfasts) that your competition can throw at them. 

So, back to the CEO that I introduced in the beginning of this blog….it is good to have new consumers trying your brands.  Yes you are right to say that the trick now is to hang onto them.  Where you are off track is when you think your loyalty program is what you need to keep them…that is only the beginning.  Unless your hotels drive these 10 points, that I made here, you will lose the vast majority of your new found consumers when they are treated better by your competition.  Gotta walk the talk.   If you don’t, we will be reading in the future about some spin message blaming the next gas hike, overbuilding spree, calamity or recession as the reason for your downturn.         

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You are on a city bus, train or a plane going somewhere and you strike up a conversation with the person next to you.  You find out they plan a major meeting at least once a year that you would like to have at your hotel.  You tell them this and you get the business.  Is there anyone out there reading this that thinks this is highly unethical?  Besides me? 

I think this is unethical because that same person has been using your competition for many years now and you did not know it.  Long ago you could have had this event at your hotel, providing for your employees and their families; providing for the hotel ownership so they could have afforded to invest in needed capital items; helping your brand grow stronger each booking at a time; making it easier for lenders to say yes to investments needed to keep your hotel competitive and the list goes on to your vendor partners, community and so on.  It begs the question “how happy or unhappy has the client been at your competition?”  Would that person have moved to your hotel much sooner if you would have bumped into them, sat next to them, or better yet….you planned to meet them sooner?  Sitting here right now you do not know who they are or who they work for but you plan to find these kinds of opportunities each and every day.  If you don’t do that now, you certainly should.  There are many people who are counting on you to provide for them and the truth is some of these employees counting on you don’t even know who you are, or what you do or how much power you possess to impact their livelihoods, but man they need you none-the-less.   

In one of the fifty stories I tell in my new book, “Ethical Theft”, I would go up to a meeting that would be breaking at my competition and I would approach the person closest to me and ask them who the person in charge is.  He would point out the person to me and I would wait until that person would finish whatever they were doing before I would approach them with my business card in my hand.  I would say something like “this is not the right time or place to go into this, but I wanted you to know that I would love to have this meeting at my hotel.  Could I please make a call on you after this meeting is over this week to talk about it?”  85% of the time this person would either think or say I was crazy.  I would say “I don’t know if I am a little crazy doing things this way, but I what I do know is that I am more confident in my hotel to do a better job for you….that’s why I do it.”  If it is a sales meeting that is taking place I have often been brought into the meeting room after everyone has returned from the break and sat down.  The leader of the session would announce what I just did and would ask if any of them would be willing to do that….sometimes a hearty applause would follow.  I said 85% kept an open mind, the other 15% would think that I was nothing short of a river pig and would not want to have anything to do with me….probably a bunch of accountants.  If I could bat .850 and impress 85% of the people I first meet then those are pretty good odds that I can live with. 

If I can liberate business from my competition then that client was not as loyal as they needed to be and it was just a matter of time before they sit on a plane with someone someday and decide to move their business elsewhere.  Is that stealing?  Or is it just fast forwarding the process a bit?  If you can steal from your competition, then they deserve to lose it.  If someone steals from you, then shame on you….you deserve it.  Same goes for employees too.     

So when does loyalty begin?  What happened to just satisfying people?  I was a speaker at a conference several years ago where we asked the audience to open their wallets and count how many “loyalty programs” they belonged to.  The average was 8 programs per person and in some cases they belonged to several competing programs at the same time.  Satisfaction is not the goal, loyalty is and it can’t come in the form of just a marketing program.  It has to come in the one on one dealings with each and every one of your employees.  Each and every one of them from the person who answers the phone to the person who fixes the toilets.  If they are that good then your guest and your customer will know that the people running that ship are geniuses.  You have figured out that flat screen TV’s and free internet are cool things to have, but the deciding differentiator in how you drive loyalty lies within your greatest asset….your people.  Many talk a good game here, but very few deliver like they should.

So, what are some of the things that you can do to communicate and show that you desire loyalty….better yet, that you want to earn their loyalty?  Well, it starts with that first sales call.  That sales person needs to care more than their competition does.  If they have to fake it, or invent it, or pretend it….then they are the wrong salesperson or they work for the wrong hotel (maybe both).  You can’t fake caring and you can’t fake wanting to earn your customers loyalty.  As a leader, see talent anywhere and everywhere you go and when you spot it…steal those people.  Have a value proposition ready to go for that potential superstar employee.  Chances are you can’t steal them on the spot, so set up a meeting over coffee and talk about what is important to them before you ever tell them what is important to you.  Tap into their wants and needs just like you do your customers.  Treat your employees like volunteers that could be gone tomorrow if you don’t give them what they need to be successful (guidelines, expectations, training, resources, score boarding and more care than they have ever gotten from any employer).  Now you are starting with people that truly care and want to succeed….things that are hard to impossible to teach. 

You educate your staff on how you compare to the competition.  Some have better amenities, some have better locations….but none….absolutely none of them will have a greater desire to make that guest happy and loyal.  Nobody will be able to take that from you or copy it.  It is something you are constantly defining and refining. 

All of your employees will know that the customer is not a dollar sign or an American Express card.  They are real people that want to be recognized and felt connected just like all of us do.  You see them as real people with real needs and real challenges that you can help them with.  Here is an example of what I am thinking here:  you have a “policy” (doesn’t that word give you chills?) that your clients sign an agreement to use your sleeping rooms and meeting space.  Several days before their planned event the meeting planner has something happen to their chairman and featured speaker for the day and they have to cancel.  By the letter of the agreement they owe you for the applicable charges.  Instead, you not only void those charges or maybe give them a total credit for the same function in the future, but you call on that chairman in the hospital with a huge card signed by every employee in your hotel.  You offer any help that you can to the chairman’s family and fellow workers.  You mean it and it is real.  On a happier note, you tap into your client’s hobbies and interests and give them a gift.  It could be a book, an article or connecting them with someone of similar interest.  Real people serving real people.  Ritz Carlton wants ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.  For the rest of us just being real people serving real people works. 

Net net, when you and I are old and grey and we are sitting on our front porches telling our grandkids some of the cool things we saw and did, I promise you it won’t be about the financials.  It will be the about the human interest stuff.  The things you did and they did and the things you accomplished together with your staff.          

Measure the worth of your clients or potential clients not just by the small meeting they can give you today.  Measure them over the course of the next ten years or more of small meetings.  Measure how much they will say about you and your operation and how loyal they are because you communicated care and then delivered it every single employee experience at a time.  With this kind of culture

you will kick the snot out of your competition who wants to focus on plasma TV’s and free internet service.  You will be well on your way to fostering loyal clients. 

Another story from my book before we wrap it up this week….”A Salute to Industry”.  I would approach our top six clients and tell them that we have been thanking them for far too long now and it was high time we helped them improve their profits as well.  I would explain that we wanted to dedicate a space in our hotel for them to advertise their products and services.  We would calculate how many guests would walk past their exhibit over the course of a month and the number would be quite impressive….it even surprised us when we first calculated it.  So for 30 days there would stand an attractive display behind velvet ropes, a sign telling our guests who this client is and how they can contact them if they wanted to hear from them.  At the end of the month when it was time to take their display down for the next client, we would have a cocktail and hors d’ oeuvres party around their display.  We would take an 8X10 photo of the event and mount it in an attractive frame and mount it on the wall where the display would be for posterity.  We would also send a similar photo to that company for their use (pr, company newsletter, annual financial statements).   We were in essence thanking them for their business by helping to provide them with business as well.  Now, for the remaining six months of the year we would ask POTENTIAL clients to advertise their “wares” in this Salute to Industry area.  We would have a reception around their display at the end of thirty days and they would see a wall with pictures of our happy existing clients.  We would now be on a fast track to liberating more business.  What was normally dead space in our hotel became a real profit and social center of attraction.  I would sometimes be passing by that area  and see an unknown  guest looking at it and picking up a brochure to learn more about that company.  I would approach them and tell them who I was and tell them the cool things about our clients or hopeful client’s product or service.  A real person having a real conversation with a real person who had real interest.  How cool is that?         

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Last week I wrote about how to capture low lying fruit by making greater inquiry conversions from potential customers trying to come in.  I showed you how to increase typical inquiry conversions of 30% and how to get them to 80% with a transaction selling formula.  We set the hospitality standard when I was Founder and Chairman with www.SignatureWorldwide.com.  Check them out, they are still the world’s biggest and best at it.    

Now, I want to share important tips on how to make relationship selling calls that drive maximum loyalty. A transaction sales call is one where you are under the gun to make an impression, get in and get out….phones are ringing, people are standing in line to possibly buy your product or service and time is of the essence.  A relationship sales call is one where you go out to meet a client/potential client, or they come to see you, but you have more time to do this thing right.  I will list the numerous elements of the formula, but will only talk about those I feel have not been duly driven home in the marketplace.  This should give you the edge when making calls on the same folks that your competition does.  Speaking of which, you should know who those competing salespeople are, you should know what they say and how they say it.  It’s you against them…mano e mano (or however you spell that).  It ‘s not just product against product, service against service.  It starts with you against them….very very personal.  If you don’t know what they say or how they say things about you, against you, comparing to you…then ask your clients.  Ask those you lost business to “…may I ask you what you really like about my competition and in particular what you liked about the salesperson that I can learn from…..”  I tell a story in my new book that is about to come out “Ethical Theft…..how to steal business from your competition” that in WWII there was a branch of the German army that studied the actions of the American Generals.  They figured the more they knew about them, the better they could calculate their next strategic and tactical moves.  They concluded that General George Patton was a devoted historian and would construct battle plans from those already fought at some point in the past.  They took this news to Adolf Hitler and thankfully he dismissed them as a sandwich short of a picnic.  Thank goodness he did, because Patton was a historian and he did fashion battle plans from historical battles.  The more you know about your competition the better you can sell against them.  The better you sell against them the better your chances of winning…..pretty basic, eh?

 

A Relationship Building Sales Call:  My book offers much more in-depth, but here are the essentials. 

1.  Do Your Homework.  Where has your potential client bought before and how much have they paid?  Eliminates the need to ask them “…..so what is your budget?”  Also eliminates the need for them to lie to you about how much of a budget they have. 

2.  Warm-Up.  Make a personal connection with an observation you make in that first meeting or something you learned from doing your homework.  You are a real person and so is this potential client…..there is so much more to this relationship than making money and don’t ever forget it.  Loyalty between the two of you is the ultimate goal. 

3.  Personality Partner.  Get an education on how to tap into someone’s personality and how to practice the platinum rule of communicating in a style that makes them feel more comfortable and not one that makes you feel more comfortable.  E-mail me if you think I need to write a blog on the 4 personality styles and how to sell to each (it’s also in my book) . 

4.  Uncover Their Needs.  More time should be spent here than on any single item in this entire formula.  Shut up and listen. Find out if they are “want” needs (would like to have but not critical) or “must” needs. 

5. Determine if This Business Is Right For You.  You are under the gun to produce, I know, but don’t book bad business for your company because you need the production.  Bosses…don’t be stupid by getting your sales folks to concentrate only on their production.  I’ve asked many salespeople how their business is doing and they say “awesome”….and they mean it, but meanwhile the asset is losing millions of dollars.  Why?  Because they thought the question meant “are you producing your quota?” 

6.  Connect BIG Benefit Reasons As To Why This Client Should Use You….too many times I hear sales people talking minutia when they should be thinking and talking B  I  G. 

7.  Additional Benefits tied to client’s needs…smaller, but still important. 

8.  Trial Close.  Rarely should a client ever say no to your question of “can we have your business”.  Rarely should your salesperson be messing with objection statements (things they say of a client does not buy).  Instead ask “….Ms. So and So, we reviewed the 17 big benefits to using our hotel/cruise lines/whatever business and we even talked about the 2 challenges we face that we will still work on overcoming.  Are we on path that will get you to say yes to using us?  The potential client says “no…..don’t think so”.  Your retort “….then please tell me what we must do to earn your business?”  if you cannot deliver all that they need then you should not ask to confirm until you can satisfy her needs, or she has found out that no other competitor can satisfy every one of her needs as well. 

9.  Overcome Objections.  After the trial close….move challenges/negatives into the positive column with creative ideas that you and the potential client construct.  Now there is a team effort…your client helping you to help them. 

10.  Use a Strong Close….when you think the answer is yes.  Ms. So and So…. I love my competition because they are so good that we keep each other honest.  Having said that I still think we are the best, we now have 18 positives and 1 negative….….18 to 1 good.  May I please earn the right to service your business?” 

11.  Follow up Sooner Than The Client Expects. 

12.  Seek to Improve.  Make a face to face sales call on every client who used your services and ask them what you can do be better next time.  Make them tell you something….there is always something you can do to improve just one thing. 

13.  Always Be Advancing the Sale, and Not Just Continuing.  Continuance is when you make a sales call and they don’t have specific needs just yet, but they will sometime in the future and you say “…..I’ll call you in a few months”  Bad.  Advancement would be….I will call you the week of March 12^th and will e-mail you 2 weeks out to get a great day and time for you…..” and you do it.  When you advance they will be better prepared to have feedback for you. 

 

Bosses, salespeople can make great calls, but they are making them to the wrong person.  Sales people can be making great calls to the right people, but those right people have a personal/professional agenda that they cannot share with you right now (merger, going public or private….that kind of thing).  If you don’t think your salespeople are producing enough then go out on sales calls with them.  Don’t guess at what they are doing right or wrong….go with them.  They may be doing everything right and it is just a matter of advancing the sale….which can take time.  Even if you are doing great and you love your sales staff….get to know the clients on an intimate level.  The power lies with he/she who can deliver the revenue production.  Hang onto these revenue producers and by all means do not let your competition steal them.  How many of you have trained your staff for the competition?  Too many of you.  Personally, I’d rather lose a great general manager than a great sales person who can bring in a bunch of business.  If we lose the GM the clients may not even notice….but if you keep losing great salespeople….your clients will notice that something is not quite right with your operation.  I expect someone to e-mail me and say how can a GM be great if they are not close to their clients and I would say you are dead right….they can’t be great if they are not wired to who brings in the business. 

 

Loyalty is the end game.  You made a great sales call and as a result they used your facility.  You continue to drive value and deliver more than they expected each and every time.  You are well on your way to realizing a lifelong client who is loyal to you and you to them.  Your client was not worth one small meeting.  They are worth one small meeting 50 times over the next 10 years, not to mention every person they told to use your facility too.           

 

Happy hunting everyone.   Hope to catch you on the next blog when I go into more detail on how to make follow-up sales calls more dynamic and compelling.

 

 

 

 

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So a potential client calls me and asks if I can help them make money.  Truth is I want to say yes right away, but I don’t know until I am able to conduct an assessment…a reality trip of the situation if you will.  I ask them big picture kinds of questions and ask them what the goal is.  Then I have them shopped over the phone and/or in person…sometimes both.  This way I have the client’s perspective and that of the potential consumer to that client.  I have enough to now go in and ask employees and client’s of this prospective client what they think.  Usually no more than a week of this and I have a darn good idea what the situation is and how to fix it so this client can maximize revenues and profits.  I produce an aggressive short, medium and long term strategy and tactical plan complete with action steps, timeline and estimated needed investment.  If they agree to the plan we then sit with many authors (employees) to get their buy-in and input to make the plan even better.  To get the employees to help in the plan requires training skills and sometimes it is just communicating, but we do it within plain sight and include absolutely everyone.  So where do I now usually begin to try and make an economic impact with this client?

Low lying fruit.  We look at the potential business that is already trying to come into my newest client’s business first and foremost.  Why go scaring up new clients just yet when we may have some really good ones already trying to get in?  We look at the phone inquiries, walk-in consumers and potential consumers, e-mails, web site SEO and even people that still write letters to businesses.  Any and every channel that a potential client would use to contact my client is what we analyze.  From that analysis we develop a plan that will get this first impression to be the very best it can be and better than every competitor we will shop for this client.  Again, this may take training or it may just be communicating expectations and keeping everyone accountable…especially us.

Here is one TRANSACTIONAL SELLING example that we made an industry best and industry standard in the hospitality world at www.Signatureworldwide.com .  An initial phone call, e-mail or potential customer walks in.   Here are the more important elements of the selling and service formula that we would implement:

1.       Answer the phone in 3 rings or less with an approved and upbeat greeting.  Say something that will pleasantly surprise someone…like: “Thanks for calling the award winning XYZ, this is John, how may I help you?”  They indicate they are interested in your product or service so you go to the next step.

2.       Qualify.  What dates, how many persons, what product or service.  “While I am checking on that availability, may I ask what brings you to the area?” if you are a hotel.  “To better serve you may I ask what you will be using this dump truck for?”…. if you are an equipment rental place.  The more you know about your prospects needs, the better you can take better care of these needs and possibly sell them additional things they might not have known you could handle for them. 

3.       Value Proposition.  Name 4 benefits about what you are selling and offer 2 options of possible…..then the price.  Consumers like options (not too many).  As consumers we also make value kinds of decisions, like your product may cost more….but as a consumer I am getting far much more.  The value formula V=D/E was talked about in my last blog and it is called offering discounts to consumers.   Always, always, always benefits before price.

4.       Ask to confirm.  Far too many salespeople do not ask for the business……..ASK.  One example would be to say “May I please go ahead and confirm one of those for you?”

5.       If the client buys, then read back the order to make sure you got the information correct.  Find out how they will pay for your product or service and finalize all needed details.  Offer a memorable and hearty thank you and when you will follow up.  If they don’t buy then you will initiate a Resistance Question.  Even though you have done everything correctly in this formula there still may be something preventing the potential customer from buying.  We want to know what that concern is without sounding or being desperate.  “I’m sorry, is there something that I have failed to mention…maybe something else you were looking for?”  Make it your fault they did not buy.

6.       Overcome objections.  Address their concerns.  Also think about quoting additional benefits, a sense of urgency (limited supply or availability….never ever lie about this), your GURANTEED satisfaction policy or whatever it is that you feel will show the prospect that you care and are confident in your product or service. 

7.       Ask to Confirm again.

There are so many more skills that can be used like getting and using caller name, adjusting your tone to meet that of the prospect and so on…..but focus on these 7 skills and you will be ready for more.  The right number of skills that you should be using are dependent upon your market, rates you are trying to get, what your competition is doing and consumer profiles.  Some clients only need these 7 skills to convert 80% of their low lying fruit inquiries.  Others need all 19 skills that we teach.

This is a formula and not a script.  People hate scripts.  Use this stuff and our staff will get more comfortable with these steps and it will sound like a conversation.  You are not looking for 100% conversions but somewhere closer to 70-80% for many businesses.  If you convert 100% of your inquiries then you are not charging enough.

More on relationship selling next week. 

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Business Strategies in a Recession:  How to Add Consumer Value to Your Business
 
Pre-Blog Questions:
1.       What % of the population buys your product or service because of its price?  Come on now….guess!
2.       Before someone ever called up your organization, walked into your front door or hit your website...What level of service, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the best of the best) do you think your consumer is expecting?
3.       How do your consumers measure value in your product or service?  How can you use this to construct a better value proposition than your competition?  Coward….think about it before you read on. 

Answers from my perspective:

What % of the population buys your product or service because of price?
I find that most businesses think the number is greater than it really is.  Even gas stations should not be so focused on their price, but they are because they are content to be commodities when they should be thinking value (more on this later).   I believe that price is more like 3 or 4 on the list of top 10 criteria that even lowest-level income consumers take into consideration.  Let’s take hotel rooms as an example.  If price was indeed the hotel consumer’s #1 concern then they would instead stay with a relative, in their cars or at “Bob’s Bargain Motel” next to the railroad tracks with all the graffiti.  People will pay a little bit more to get what they perceive to be a lot more….even minimum wage consumers make these kinds of decisions.  “For $1.50 more this blow dryer has multiple speeds, looks cooler and is heavier duty……I’ll spend the $1.50 to get the extras”. 

What level of service, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the best of the best) do you think your consumer is expecting?
Most of you were thinking 8-9-10 and the answer is a lot less.  Why?  I have asked 800 audiences if service levels in America are getting better or worse.  99.99999% of them say it is getting worse.  And, in talking with international folks I get similar answers.  Most businesses hope for a 10.  Consumers dream and pray for a 10….but most expect to get a 5.  Why? Because first time consumers always lump businesses into the batch of the bad providers out there.   I have asked numerous individuals to stand up and tell me the last time a restaurant, a shoe shine shop, the cable company or an AutoZone store blew them away with exceptional service.  Most take quite a long time to say anything….and when they do say something they give stories about how water was served at their table, the food being hot, the waitress being friendly and the check coming promptly.  People, this is what we are S  U  P  P  O  S  E  D  to get!  What we pay for!  It is amazing that we are blown away with good feelings because we got what we paid for.  But here is the clincher, if businesses TRY to deliver more than what people expect…they will be impressed.  Just by the sheer fact that they are making the attempt.  That’s how bad service is collectively in America today. 

How do your consumers measure value in your product or service?  How can you use this to construct a better value proposition than your competition?
Value is calculated in the consumer’s mind by starting with an expectation (E) and seeing, feeling, smelling and hearing how your organization delivers (D).  My value formula reads like this:  V= D/E.  If a consumer has never used your services before and expects your business service level will be a 5 (E), but then you deliver a 9 (D)...then the value delivered is maximized.  It is a win/win for you and the consumer.  Now, when they use you a second time….what will they be expecting?  Right, a 9.  And although it is much, much harder to impress people a 2nd, 3rd, 4th time, etc...that is what businesses must do.  Lower prices?  Give away free stuff?  NO.  deliver more than what the consumer is expecting.  Never stop adding value to the consumer experience.

Let me offer a few real world examples of businesses and consumer value: 

AutoZone advertised big time on billboards, radio and TV that if you walked into their stores to buy a new battery, they would first test your old battery to make sure that was the problem before exploring any problem further.  Same with other parts of the car.  The problem was….the stores, in Memphis, TN (where AutoZone is headquartered ), rarely did.  I thought this was a sensational marketing idea when it came out but it was not supported with training and reinforcement.  As a consumer I had a #7 expectation and they delivered a #2.  It would have blown me away if their stores had actually taken the time to really test customer’s batteries and other major parts while under the hood.  Do you think AutoZone ever considers how much more they could have sold just by adding this value to consumers?

One more story:  Most of us are blown away if our local gas station is clean, the pumps are working, the washer fluid is filled up (with a brush!), the credit card reader can be read and is working and, here is the grand finale, the paper receipt actually prints out!  W    O    W!  What a gas station you have found.  Would you drive 3 extra blocks and pay 2 cents more per gallon for this service?  Maybe, maybe not.  But, what if the owner or a manager came out and told you he appreciated your business and to let him know if there was anything else you needed?  I think you would be sold on that gas station.  This gesture is of little cost to businesses and consumers would absolutely be blown away.  Their thought would be, “I actually know the owner of a gas station.”  And how many people would they tell about this gas station? 

V=D/E is very powerful and needs to be factored into everything businesses do relative to communicating with their consumers and potential consumers.

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So I am looking at the number of hits I received with my very first blog that I did last week (I think it was 181 hits) and had no comments to speak of and nobody said it was a favorite.  I need to step up my game here, so let’s try this new blog. 

There has always been this heated debate about whether businesses should lower rates to drive business into their locations (stores, websites, contact centers) in  a down economy.  In the left corner we have those who say if you drop trow (slang for trousers or your pants…see what you can learn on my blog?) on rates you will have a tough time raising them when the market gets better.  They also claim that dropping rates will cut into profits, so much so, that you don’t really come out ahead on the profit line.  You work harder….not smarter and you don’t net the profit you need.

In the other (right) corner we have the folks who say that they just can’t sit there and wait out a recession without taking positive actions.  The cash flow is needed and they need to gainfully employ their staff or they will lose them forever.  Maybe….just maybe these “new” customers who are now doing business with you, because you lowered your rate, will stay with you when you raise rates in the future.  Which corner do you subscribe to?

My thinking goes more with the “right” corner than the left…..but with important cautions and considerations to executing this discounted rate theory.  Here are my reasons:

1.        You need to provide for your employees or you do run the risk they will leave you…maybe forever.  Your great employees are your most valued asset and it is these people that separate you from being a commodity or being a real value driven, personal services culture that blows people away (a good way).

2.        Regardless of the number of employees you have and how many of them sell for you….you can never have enough salespeople…especially third party people who talk you up in the marketplace.  So, the more people that sell/communicate/talk for you…the better your chances of generating greater revenues.      

3.       TARGET your discounting….do not shotgun them into the market for all to see and hear.  For example, I am working with a startup health club that needs to grow it’s business fast.  We are targeting a discount to consumers, we don’t currently have, that need to get in shape for their jobs and also can influence many others into trying the gym.  They are firemen, police officers, mail carriers, teachers/professors and student athletes (colleges, high schools and AAU type sports orgs for kids).  By targeting these market segments we can control the volume of the discounting; keep a tight timeline on how long the offer is good for and can justify the discount to the “non” discount public….because of the volume that this market segment can provide us.  Most consumers understand that the more business you bring…the better the deal you get (not always lower price….but best value).

4.       When the competition is hunkered down waiting for something or someone to come and save them….you will be aggressively pursuing customers who in the past have not done business with you.  You will show them that in spite of increased pricing in the future you have VALUE added benefits as to why they will want to pay more to stay with you.  You will out-personalize your competition, you will out-service them and you will out-sell them.  You will not cut your services/product or value proposition because you lowered the rate.  Your competition’s employees will want to work for you and their customers will want to be your customers when you execute at this high level. 

These recommendations are taken from practical experiences and not from theories or somebody’s idea of a good book subject.  Tell me what you think…and will someone please make this one of their favorite sites or I will be forced to get family members to stuff the ballot box.  Just kidding. 

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Because my little company is dedicated to working with only cool clients in helping them grow their revenues I thought it would be fitting to share with you where we start.  Low lying fruit.  Converting the callers, e-mailers, web hitters, walk-ins and even letter writers who are trying to buy my client's products or services.  We look at all of the different channels people use to buy and we raise the levels of service, communication and selling in all areas.  So, what might have been a 30% conversion channel....becomes an 80% and that found revenue starts to happen the very day we touch it.  Sweet eh?  That is step one of many steps we will blog on soon.....questions or comments?   

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