Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Essentials for Getting Repeat Business

Here is the story of two companies.  I bought a ton of products from both this year.  Company 1’s offerings were stellar, but had a laissez-faire attitude toward the significant hurdles I faced during the procurement process. Company 2’s product line was less impressive, but the folks there jumped through hoops to ensure that I was happy and satisfied with my purchases.

Which company am I more likely to buy from again?

In the small business world, everything is personal. You can have the most incredible product or service the customer has ever seen, but if she doesn’t like you, it won’t matter. Quality is important, of course, but trust trumps it every time. The way Company 2 treated me makes me want to give its offerings another shot, and it makes me want to recommend it to others.

I’m not the first person to say that it’s much easier to sell to an existing customer than to get a new customer. However, despite the fact this idea is almost a cliché, small business owners continually expend more effort marketing to strangers than taking care of the people who are right under their noses.  Once you’ve gone to all the trouble to seal the initial deal, here are five things you must do to get repeat business from your customers.

Insert Yourself

Small businesses are often appealing because customers like to support the local guy (or gal) who is just like them. As your business grows, you might lose the intimate bond you have with your customers, and that’s dangerous. If you want to make a terrific impression, owners should connect one-on-one with customers whenever possible and especially if there has been a snafu and the customer is angry. If a customer understands that you are there for him personally, he will be more likely to give your company the benefit of the doubt.

Give Them Something Special

Reward programs are a no brainer – it costs virtually nothing to design a simple repeat visitor card. And if you have the choice of getting your morning latte from Starbucks or the neighborhood joint and the neighborhood joint is giving you a free scone on your next visit, you’re going there. Also, give existing customers a sneak peek at new products or services and give them freebies or deep discounts in exchange for feedback.

For more ideas, check out the full post at the AMEX Open Forum.

 

"Project Manager" Means Different Things to Different People

I came across a post in my LinkedIn feed from a PM from Bahrain, Eman Deabil, who sparked a healthy debate about whether “Project Manager” is a real title and “Project Management” is a real profession.

The crux of Eman’s argument is that project management is actually a set of interrelated skills that need to be developed by the person who is in charge of managing a project. These skills differ depending on the project, and especially depending on the industry in which the project will take place. For example, managing a project in IT requires a separate set of competencies than a project in the eLearning space.

No PM is One Size Fits All

Eman cites her concerns with the current PMP certification process, which she feels assumes that people who obtain this credential can go on to successfully coordinate a project in any industry. She simply doesn’t think this is the case. A Project Manager must not only have project management skills, but also the appropriate academic credentials and experience in the industry at hand.

Project Manager, she says, isn’t even a genuine title. Rather, titles related to project management should be much more descriptive – for instance adding details on the person’s line of business or type of project (e.g. Project Manager in Supply Chain). Instead of being asked to choose whether they are principally involved in project management or learning and development, for instance, professionals being considered for new positions should say they are “Project Managers in Learning and Development.”

I see Eman’s point, although I do think that transferable skills – or those that are appropriate across a wide range of industries and roles – are especially useful when it comes to project management. No matter what industry or business line you manage projects in, you’d better know how to lead disparate teams, coordinate multi-functional activities, manage timelines and budgets, monitor and report on progress, and analyze results.

For the rest of the argument, have a look at the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Evolving in 2015: Workplace Communication and Collaboration

In 2013, entrepreneur Toni Lopresti and a few IT expert friends founded Intellinote, an enterprise software company based in Reston, VA. Tony and I recently got together to talk workplace productivity and team collaboration. In our interview, he discusses the evolving role of email, communication, and what companies can do to boost overall productivity in the workplace.

Tony, where do you see workplace collaboration heading in 2015 and beyond?

The modern workforce is embracing lightweight, easy-to-use software tools that can be used anywhere, anytime. I fully expect workspace collaboration tools to support this paradigm too. Complex and unwieldy solutions will continue to fall out of favor with businesses going forward.

How do you think our methods of business communication are changing?

Unified communications will continue to gain significant traction in 2015 and beyond. Business users are unhappy with the fragmented nature of communications – spread across email, messaging applications, video conferencing solutions, etc. They will look to unify and bring business communications together. This approach will make meetings, discussions and conversation, which often result in valuable insights and to-dos, more actionable. Fewer things will slip through the cracks.

What should companies do to improve employee collaboration?

Collaboration has both a physical aspect and a virtual aspect. On the physical front, companies need to keep an eye on the evolving science of open offices and floor plans to determine what’s best for their teams. On the virtual front, where software has a major role to play, companies owe it to themselves and their employees to foster collaboration. A sensible approach is to use tools that capture and organize business content that’s created by employees on a daily basis, that turn static content into actionable content with a click, and that consolidate their typical 6+ specialized collaboration tools into a single platform.

For more from Tony, head over to the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

SOS: Your Colleague is Making You Look Like A Loser

It’s a universal experience. You and a same-aged colleague with a similar background and education start out at identical places in your careers. It’s probably on the bottom rung. You know the same people, do the same things. And then one day, that colleague has something fantastic happen, like a major promotion or a high-profile mentorship. Maybe he plays his cards right, maybe it’s just a lucky break. But either way, his career is suddenly skyrocketing while yours is…not.

You’ve been lapped.

Colleague: 1. You: 0

It’s tough to know how to feel when this happens. One the one hand, you are happy for your colleague, who may even be your friend. But human nature being what it is, you’re also pissed off, resentful, and insecure because you’re evidently a no-talent loser while your colleague has turned your mutual experiences into gold.

It would be easy to stop trying, to accept that once you’ve been lapped once, it’s bound to happen again and again as your colleague gains momentum. It would be easy to sink into a depression because no matter what you do, your career will never sparkle and amaze in quite the same way.

That time when you dusted the people who once lapped you

Well, I’m here to tell you why being lapped isn’t the worst thing in the world. Let’s start with high school. Remember the people who lapped you then? They were the pretty jocks and cheerleaders, the kids for whom being a teenager was graceful and effortless. I’m sure you’ve heard the notion that in all likelihood, these sort of kids peak in high school and that it’s all downhill after graduation. They will never again be as successful in the game of life. While the nerds get rich with their tech start-up and winning stocks, the cool kids are working dead-end jobs and frequenting the same sports bars they hung out 20 years ago.

Similarly, the fact that someone has lapped you in your career now doesn’t mean that person is guaranteed to be ahead forever. Careers are a journey. This year could be your colleague’s high point, while next year might be yours.

So try to stop thinking of the situation as all or nothing (i.e. now that she got that promotion I’ll never catch up) and realize that this could be a golden opportunity to challenge yourself and find a way to be on top. There’s nothing that fuels motivation more than a little competition, and your colleague’s sprint ahead could in fact be just the incentive you need. It may just give you the courage, for instance, to ask your boss what you need to do to perform at a higher level.

For the rest of my advice on surviving getting lapped, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How Much Time Do You Actually Need with Your Boss?

According to a Leadership IQ study “Optimal Hours with the Boss,” most people spend only half the time they need with their boss. Employees who spend the optimal six hours interacting with their direct leader per week are 29 percent more inspired, 30 percent more engaged, 16 percent more innovative and 15 percent more intrinsically motivated than those who spend only one hour per week.

Believe it or not, though, more time is not necessarily better. When employees spend more than six hours per week interacting with their leaders, diminishing returns are seen in terms of building inspiration, engagement and motivation. The study showed that levels of inspiration or engagement remained the same or declined beyond six hours of interaction.

When I asked Leadership IQ CEO Mark Murphy about this curious finding, he said: “When you spend too much time with the boss, it starts to feel like micromanaging.  People want a certain amount of boss time to get aligned, share concerns, ask questions, etc., but then they want to actually go put all of that information into practice.”

Email Doesn’t Take the Place of Face-to-Face

Among people who only spend an hour per week interacting with their leader, 33 percent of that time is face-to-face interaction and 42 percent is via email.  By contrast, those who spend six hours per week interacting with their leader spend much more of their time (48 percent) in face-to-face interactions, and much less of their time (27 percent) interacting via email.  So, not only is the amount of time spent interacting with one’s leader important, but increasing the percentage of face-to-face interaction matters as well.

For the rest of the post, check out the SilkRoad blog.

What is Your Time Culture?

In her book The Culture Map, global workplace expert Erin Meyer talks about one particular keynote speech she had to give to an audience in Brazil. Her remarks were slated to last 60 minutes, but the client said she could take all the time she needed.

Meyer didn’t quite believe him. After all, during just about any keynote address in America, you can expect a firm index card countdown:

“10 minutes remaining”

“5 minutes remaining”

“2 minutes remaining”

At “0 minutes remaining,” you’d better get off that stage!

Meyer took 65 minutes to give her Brazilian speech and had a great time responding to questions from an appreciative audience. At the end, though, her client said, “It was great, but it ended so early. You certainly could have gone longer—they were loving it!”

Meyer was confused. “But you gave me 60 minutes," she said. "It would be disrespectful to the group if I took more time than pre-scheduled without getting your permission.”

“But in this situation, we are the customer,” the Brazilian replied. “We're paying you to be here. If you see that we have more questions and would like to continue the discussion, isn’t it good customer service to extend the presentation in order to meet our needs?”

What Is Your Time Culture?

This simple anecdote illustrates the enormous impact of differing attitudes toward time in the workplace. And it’s not just a country thing. Every office in the world—large or small—has a unique culture in regards to time and scheduling. For one company, it may be typical to start a meeting 10 or 15 minutes late, while in another, this practice would be frowned upon. Some organizations encourage hour-long lunch breaks, while others subtly expect that employees will eat at their desks unless it’s a special occasion. 

In the classic book, The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time, anthropologist and author Edward T. Hall explained the difference between monochronic (M-time) cultures and polychronic (P-time) cultures. M-time cultures view time as tangible and concrete. “We speak of time as being saved, spent, wasted, lost, made up, crawling, killing and running out," Hall wrote. "These metaphors must be taken seriously.” 

For more where this came from, have a look at the full post at the AMEX OpenForum.

Honing Your Entrepreneurial Skills: Reliability

If you’re been reading this blog for a while, you know that one of my biggest pet peeves is flakiness. It’s not a good quality in anyone, but it’s the worst in an entrepreneur because when you own your business, the buck stops with you. If you forget or otherwise fail to do something critical, no one is going to step in and seamlessly fill in.  Many promising businesses go under simply because their founders can’t be trusted to do what they say they’re going to do. 

If you are going to improve one thing in 2015, how about working on your personal reliability? How about being the person that customers, employees, and partners can always count on? Here are six tips to that effect.

Think Before You Promise

You want to help, so when someone asks you for something, your immediate reaction is “yes, of course!” But there are only so many hours in the day, and if you say yes too much, you won’t have time for the important things.  The next time you’re pinged, take a step back and objectively consider whether you have bandwidth to make good on the promise. Saying no now is far better than breaking your word later.

Don’t Overbook Yourself

To the point above, entrepreneurs and small business owners are usually pressed for time. Don’t make things worse by scheduling multiple meetings on top of each other – especially if they are in different locations! You are just asking to get stuck in traffic, at the airport, or even on the phone – leaving others hanging.

Plan for Deadlines

Most people don’t miss deadlines on purpose.They miss them because the task takes longer than they expected and they run out of time. Avoid this problem by plotting exactly what you’ll accomplish on a given project every week. You’ll be able to see well in advance if you’re running behind schedule and can make adjustments accordingly.

Ask for Help

Many owners get into jams because they think they are superheroes and can do everything themselves. They don’t routinely delegate and they can’t admit when they’re under water. Realize that calling on extra resources so that you don’t have to sacrifice your reliability is a sign of maturity, not weakness.

Invest in the Right Technology

There are things in life we can control, and things we can’t. Technology is a wonderful asset to our businesses, but it’s not foolproof.  One thing I’ve learned working with Canon is that as an entrepreneur, I can’t afford to have technology that stops while my business is still going. I’ve had my Canon MAXIFY printer for 3 months and have yet to be slowed down by any unexpected problems. In my office, the MAXIFY is joined by multiple laptops and data storage systems, as well as redundant Internet access. This approach greatly reduces the chance that I’ll let a client down because something broke.

Be Honest About Foibles

No matter how hard you try, there are going to be times when you just can’t come through. Instead of trying to sweep a lapse under the rug or pretend a deadline never existed, own up. Sincerely apologize and rectify the situation as best you can. As long as it doesn’t become a habit, people will understand.

Best of luck enhancing your reliability this year – believe me, you’ll be glad you did.  And don’t forget to check out the rest of the posts in this series on business acumen, self-discipline, and productivity.

Canon will be spotlighting several small business owners on its social media channels throughout the next several months, so be sure to leave a comment and share your thoughts on this post using the hashtag #MAXIFY in order to qualify. If you are a U.S.-based small business owner (1-9 employees) and have faced a unique business challenge in your first year on the job, let us know! We’d love to hear what line of work your small business falls within and what you feel is the most important takeaway from this post.

We’ll also be rewarding select small business owners with a prize pack including the Canon Maxify MB5320 printer as well as other essentials to help you run your business more efficiently. So don’t forget to leave a link to your website or social media pages that way we can see how well you’re marketing your business and get in touch!

Troubleshooting: Other Teams' Cooperation or Lack Thereof

f you’re working with other teams outside your own who are not involved in your daily meetings, they’re not always on the same page as you regarding priorities — and sometimes they can become a roadblock to your team’s progress. How can you address that without causing additional friction?

Here's my advice:

Getting through organizational roadblocks, or simply trying to persuade a colleague to come over to the side of your priorities, is a rite of passage in the business world. People are so busy and things move so quickly that just being a nice guy isn’t going to cut it. People who don’t share your to-do list aren’t going to adhere to it simply because you ask them to. If you want other teams to cooperate with you, you have to make them want to do what you’re asking.  In other words, you have to take the time to consider: “what’s in it for them?”

In order to find out what another team’s agenda is, start by asking questions and listening carefully to the answers. What is the team evaluated on? To whom do members ultimately report up to?  What is THAT person’s strategy? Then, begin looking for ways that your project can help another team accomplish what they are trying to do anyway. Actively communicate this when trying to lift your project off the back burner.

While it’s sometimes effective to appeal to the greater good (i.e. in the best interests of the organization) when making your requests, you’ll get better results the more personal you go. Don’t think of another team as “marketing,” for instance, but instead as a group of individuals who each have their own set of priorities. By going out of your way to establish rapport with each team member before you actually need something, you will be able to appeal to their needs in the future. They’ll also be more likely to help you because you’ve built a relationship of mutual respect and trust.

Although it might be easier, I don’t recommend complaining to the other team or a higher-up about the lack of synergy. This will only serve to annoy and cause the additional friction you are concerned about. Even if this approach results in short-term compliance, the other teams will resent you and future efforts to work with them are likely to be tainted. Remember the old adage: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

For answers from three other amazing career experts, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Interview with Scott Stratten on Customer Service

Along with his partner Alison Kramer, president of UnMarketing Scott Stratten recently hosted a podcast on too-good customer service. Apparently, it is possible to go overboard, and this can leave an impression just as bad as poor service. The discussion got me thinking about the rarely discussed nuances of an effective customer service interaction, such as being complimentary without being too ingratiating, and developing rapport without TMI. Here’s what Scott had to say when I asked him how to manage this issue.

Alex: Do you believe there’s such a thing as “too-good” customer service in the B2B world? 

Scott: Overservicing is not as much of a problem in B2B as it can be in B2C, but you do have to worry about meeting sky high expectations. If you return a client email at 11PM on a Saturday, it’s impressive initially but then becomes the expectation. And when you drop the ball, you’re in trouble.

Alex: That’s a great point. In the podcast, you guys also talk about attitude. In a customer interaction, can overt happiness or bubbliness be annoying?

Scott: There is a fine line between enthusiasm and annoyance for sure. I think sometimes overly bubbly people can come across cocky too. But really, a lot of this is subjective. I would personally rather deal with people who are too happy than those who are miserable.

Alex: Most experts recommend that salespeople try to establish personal relationships with customers. Do you agree?

Scott: Largely thanks to social media, our personal opinions about non-business things can be seen by customers, and this can be a problem. Politics, religion, even sport team allegiances that never came up previously can now have an impact on that relationship. A lot of people let their guard down on social platforms, which makes them great and authentic, but if you’re authentically a jerk, you have to accept the fallout.

For the rest of Scott's interview, check out the Intuit Fast Track blog.

Today's Tips for Soliciting Customer Feedback

Collecting, managing, and leveraging customer feedback is an essential skill in today’s fast-based business world. Not only does customer input provide critical insights into improving your product or service, but it also goes a long way in maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty. I recently spoke with Intuit QuickBase program manager, Adam Kowal, for some advice on how to best collect customer feedback.

Understand what you’re trying to achieve

For many project managers, soliciting feedback is simply announcing a beta test or similar campaign, sending out a survey link and a deadline of two weeks for responses, and listening to the sounds of silence. You will be much more effective at collecting meaningful feedback if you first define why you want and need it. What do you want to improve, what are you hoping to learn, and what will you do with the data once you have it? How will you know when you have enough? These questions provide the foundation for a “learning plan” that will guide your execution.

Pick the method that makes the most sense

There is value in a quantitative result, especially if you need to know if something is statistically significant. However, for most customer feedback you will need a qualitative portion – or a part of the survey where users can answer open-ended questions. An online survey is effective for some quantitative and qualitative questions, but in many cases you are better off getting feedback via active, one-on-one engagement with the customer. When you do this, set boundaries around the conversation but be careful not to lead him or her. Researchers may unconsciously get participants to tell them what they want to hear versus what they need to hear.

For more best practices on collecting customer feedback, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.