Look around you and see if you can find silly claims. Silly claims aren’t always false, but they are sometimes pointless. Saying things like, “Increase productivity by 500% without spending a penny more” may very well be a claim you can substantiate – but do your customers instinctually play along?
Claims like the one above seem over-done, exaggerated, dishonest and sometimes just plain patronising. If your statements have the potential to have your customers thinking, “Yea right, do you think I’m stupid?” are they still worth using?
Guide your customers in like this:
- Ask a question to get their interest – how do you increase productivity without spending more money?
- Explain the steps involved – you do A, plus B and then C at this point.
- Then put your claim in the conclusion – that works out to a 500% increase in productivity.
Some claims and suggestions need to be placed deeper in your strategy then others. These types of messages should be entered in your brochures, not your one-liner adverts.
Sure, things like – “You’ve won a place in a £1,000,000 sweepstake” will attract people. But this tactic is for getting 1 in a thousand people to spend more than the second it takes to bin your flyers considering your offer.
Unless you’re not even remotely interested in getting to your real customers, and not just every Tom, Dick and Harry: you need to go for your niche. Compare line fishing to a trawler’s net – one gets you loads of fish – the other lets you gently reel in the ones you need.
How good is your team? Skill sets hidden away
Picture the scenario, someone comes up to you – your manager, the board of directors or who ever – they ask, “How good is your team?”
There are three types of answers.
There’s the completely clueless, worthless and unobserved answer:
Err, well, I suppose…. they’re good at, err…
Then there’s the apt, yet vogue ‘think on your feet’ answer that doesn’t really tell you anything new:
Well, my team is good at communicating and working together, and they have good sales – bla, bla, et cetera, bla.
Finally, nay revealingly, we have:
Well, Craig is the problems solver, and everyone knows he’s the go to man. Dan is the positive one that keeps everyone on a high. Charlie and Sarah are both calm under pressure and constantly beat their targets. As a whole, they understand each other’s skills and take advantage of knowing that if they need assistance they don’t need to be on their own…
Type one is an obvious negative. As a team leader, you’re obviously lacking – what’s worse, you’re not even on the team. You sit by them every day; you chat with them, catch up after the weekend and give them their score sheets. However, you’re no real benefit.
Imagine for a minute, that you’re leading your team up a mountain – if you don’t know how far they can go each day, important medical information, experience in climbing, how many supplies they can carry or how much they have left. You and the rest of your team will need a proper team – i.e. a rescue team to come and get you.
Type two is ambiguous. Of course your team communicates well, they were employed because of their communication skills, were they not? Of course they work together, they work in the same room, at the same counter, or at the same desk – they are together! When you can say they work collectively, then you’re talking.
If this is you, you don’t know your team well enough. You know what skills they ought to have, and you know what your boss wants to hear. This however, is most likely your limit. You go through your day thinking your team is better than it is, but failing to really appreciate the work they do. Your team don’t feel praised enough, because you can’t praise them correctly.
Your team going up a mountain with you are better off than the first team, you’re intelligent, you can think on your feet and you know what’s needed. Though, you’d fair a lot better and climb a lot further, if you only knew who had the skills you needed.
Unfortunately, you run the risk of assuming your team has the skills they need when they might not. You’ll over stretch them, push them more than they should be push and rile them up.
Type three is the only true team leader - the Edmund Hillary of Call Centres, or wherever you work.
If this is you, you not only know your team personally. You know them more than they know themselves. You pay attention to how they act, how they feel and what they say. You spend a good amount of your team investigating their skill sets and preparing them for the task ahead. You can navigate them effectively, each on their individual paths.
The good thing about having you as a team leader, is they when someone isn’t feeling motivated, you don’t instantly go, “Common chaps, let’s do this!” in an overzealous tone. You probe a little, to see if there is something you can do. If there’s not, you support them through their lull in two ways.
You let them under perform while they get it out of their system and you assist them by getting yourself and the rest of the team to pick up the slack.
Up the mountain, you’ve climbed harder, faster and more effectively than the others. Your team are tired and existed, but their proud of their achievements and are happy to give you more. If things go wrong, you instantly fashion a stretcher out of halve a tree and take turns pulling. You know when to pitch a tent to stay safe, and you know when to enough is enough.
So, how to you answer the question? How good is you team?
All too often is the case, that the first two are running the show. They fumble around at the bottom of the mountain trying to get somewhere, constantly having to give different approaches to the same problem, never really succeeding.
They don’t know what’s going on, or what skills their team has. Unfortunately, this means they those skills are hidden away, and never used.
You know when you’ve got a Hillary though. Straight up the side without question and back down again. The only time tactics suddenly change for this team is when; they’ve been up and down a few times – so are board and want to try something new and interesting.
Ask yourself, as leader, as a manager, a director or entrepreneur; next time you call yourself ‘world class’ – what’s so great about the cogs that turn in your business.
Places like call centres (or should that be the euphemism ‘Contact Centres’?), and big chain stores, employ their people with the intention of them being just another cog in the machine. Businesses want them cheap, easy to train, easy to maintain, easy to replicate and most of all – highly replaceable.
Customers have begun to expect the low service, low cost, low talent market place that has been created by casting out the talent and replacing them with automatons.
This is not just another rant about homo-robotics.
Just because your customers expect nothing more, it doesn’t mean that’s what they want.
Ask yourself, have you let your customers down, for so long, that they no longer care? Have your ignored your staff for so long that they no longer bother? Have you let yourself down for so long that you have given up trying?
More importantly, does your business culture clamp on to the delusion that you’re fantastic, amazing, ‘world class’, inspirational and innovative?
Can you ever be so good that you no longer need to try?
If your business model is such, that when a customer comes in store, or picks up the phone – they don’t care if your counter staff, your shelf stacker or your Telephone Technician is here today, gone tomorrow; it’s time to think.
How many customers do you have, that know the names of your staff?
How many customers do you have, that spare a moment for small talk about the weather?
Employing just another cog doesn’t fit the ‘fantastic’ label. To be an amazing business, you don’t just need an amazing product, and amazing brand and an amazing profit sheet.
Ask yourself, “Woud we miss you?”
Then, ask all the people who work for you.
Here’s the latest in a long living internet tradition. The Apri Fool by google.
I have to say, this one isn’t all that clever and they’ve done a much better job in previous years. But, it’ll no doubt dupe loads of ‘n00bs’ as it were.
Great fun for Google - nice to see they still like to play.
This year brings the Custom Time Flux Compactor to Gmail. The theory goes, you can change the time your emails appear to be sent. For example: send an email now - pretend you sent it yesterday when your deadline was up.
Here’s a few more from around the net, some old, some new:
Whatever next? Find out, with gDay MATE. Google Oz’s answer to searching what will happen in the future.
How about free toilet WIFI with Google TiSP?
Sick of having to log on to Gmail? Why not print all your emails out? Or, why not have Google Paper do it for you?
Sick and tired of life? Want to get away from it all? Maybe emigrating to Mars is the answer, with Virgle a joint effort from Google and Virgin.
Too many of those BetaMax tapes floating around? Tell you what, you really should convert them to HD-DVD. Get a new BetaMax converter, among these gems.
And just for fun, some flying penguins.
Here’s some more reading:
Museum of hoaxes
April Fools Day On The Web
