Business Coaching

Good customer service can make or break a business. But what if you make a point of treating your customers poorly? What if that is what differentiates you from your competitors? Can it really work?

I’m sure you’ve seen the businesses that pride themselves in their attitude. You may have even seen signs promoting restaurants and bars with tag lines like, “Meanest bartenders in the state!” or “Angry Waitresses” etc.

But there is a difference between having a theme and treating your customers poorly.

Those places, if they are successful, practice good customer service while giving their customers the experience they expect. That’s far different than being truly nasty and riding the wave of infamy while people slow down to look at the wreck that is your business.

Recently a certain bistro in Scottsdale, Arizona has gotten a lot of publicity. First, they were on a well-known restaurant coaching show in which they almost got into a physical altercation with customers and, in the end, the host of the show walked out because he decided he couldn’t help them. Even TV stars know you can’t help those who don’t want to help themselves.

If it had ended there, this story would’ve received very minor attention but, of course it didn’t stop there.

On the heels of their TV appearance, the owners of this restaurant also had a significant social media meltdown that you might have heard about. They shouted down critics and made it clear that they will fight anyone who gets in their way. In fact they said they were writing down the names of everyone who had criticized them so they could take legal action in the future, which prompted a number of funny responses. If you haven’t seen this social media screed, finding it shouldn’t be hard, even if we don’t mention the restaurant’s name in this piece, lest we bring the wrath of these business owners upon us.

While most businesses do their best to avoid any controversy or talk that can spin them negatively to the public, this establishment and their owners, seem to embrace it…or they’ve slipped off the deep end and don’t realize the potential damage they are doing to their business and their brand.

This is not a place that promises they will be mean to you, like in the video here. This establishment aspires to be destination dining. They believe their food is outstanding, as is their décor, service. But in reality, once the shock of their agreed upon persona has worn off, can this restaurant possibly make a long term go of it?

JL SNL Waitress Skit by simonaka

Owning a business can be one of the most stressful endeavors one can embark upon. With that said, it can be equally as rewarding both financially and personally.

After all the tax documents have been completed and filed, the employees have been paid, and perhaps most importantly, all the customers are happy, you are the one left feeling accomplished. Unfortunately, striving for all of that accomplishment can also produce a large amount of stress.

Whether you find reading self-help books useful or taking 30 minutes alone to meditate each day before work, it is essential to cope with the inevitable amounts of stress that accompany owning your own business.

Balance is vital to the success and wellness of any business owner so remember, while you may have already found a few ideas of how to cope with such stresses, there are many, many others.

Be sure to keep in mind that everyone’s stress is different, just as everyone copes differently. Some people unwind with classical music and a nice bottle of wine while other people go skydiving. It really depends on the person; what matters most is that you find the way of coping with stress that works best for you, and then actively and regularly involve that coping in your busy life.

The last thing you want is to be the hugely successful business owner that had a nervous breakdown and then spent all his or her money on therapy. Just as there are healthy ways of keeping busy, there are healthier ways of coping with such a hectic lifestyle. The tricky part is finding those coping mechanisms. Often times it is as simple as just distancing yourself from work completely. After all, a vacation at the beach is not really a vacation if you are on a business call the whole time.

Value is big with clients, even if they don’t directly realize it. In a sense, it is your job to make them realize it. The idea of value in the eyes of your clients relates to many aspects of your business.

There is value in your relationship with them, as well as the product and/or service you are offering. While your clients may at times feel entitled, and perhaps take the value of your business and/or product/service for granted, it is your job to remind them and educate them on the true value of your company.

Now, this is not to say that you should go straight at them and say, “Hey! You should value what we are doing here!” No, you have to be a bit more discrete than that. You have to prove to your clients and show them that your company does indeed have a great amount of value. While this certainly is not the easiest thing to do, and it takes a great deal of patience, if you lay out a plan step by step, your customers will soon see value there.

This can be done by establishing your business as something of value in the community through charitable endeavors, as well as in the business world through networking. Also, incentives and quality control are good ways to establish your company value. A high quality product or service offered to your clients with incentives for loyalty will definitely bring more value to your company.

Much of your company’s value will center on brand loyalty. If you create value with your product/service and in your company as a whole, your customers are going to remain loyal. This is the ultimate goal that everyone in your company, from the CEO down to the lowest ranking employee should strive to attain. Brand loyalty is company value.

Knowing what kind of leader you are is just about as vital a quality as any leader can have. In many ways, knowing how you lead allows you to challenge yourself to adapt to be a different kind of leader when needed. In other words, only serving as one kind of leader, a singular minded leader, is generally less effective than someone that is more adaptive in the leadership role.

For instance, if you are only an authoritative leader, your subordinates will only recognize you as such, and you will subsequently not be able to relate to them. You will likely strike a fear in them that may encourage productivity, but can also present the potential to hurt your business in other ways.

On the other hand, however, if you are both empathetic and authoritative (usually at different times and on different occasions), then you will have a much more broad reach in your leadership abilities, especially with the way you orchestrate your subordinates.

More specifically, in the right situation, if you present yourself as authoritative, you will likely encourage your team to get to work and stay that way. However, when that hard driving mentality leaves them burnt out and exhausted, more authoritativeness will likely create resentment and maybe leave some employees reconsidering their role in the company. However, if, after presenting yourself as authoritative, you follow with empathy when your team has been worked to the bone, they will be much more likely to give a little more, and perhaps even think of you in higher regards opposed to that mean, authoritative leader that they first thought you were. Then, when they get some rest and are vibrant again, you can bring back Mr. Authoritative. As you can see, it is all about timing.

A small business needs to run like a well-oiled machine, but sometimes one key part can cause significant problems in your operation as a whole. Watch for several warning signs that someone may not be worth keeping on your team:

•    Pervasive Complaints – One complaint from another team member or a customer may not be enough to justify letting someone go, especially because it’s hard to tell whether the complaint is grounded. However, if most of your team is complaining about the behaviors of one person or you get a whole series of customer complaints, it’s safe to say that this person is causing problems and may need to go.

•    Inconsistent Work Ethic – Productivity is one of the keys of getting a small business off the ground. Watch for timeliness, attentiveness to tasks during work hours, and the ability to complete projects in accordance with reasonable deadlines. You’ll be wasting money if you keep a team member who doesn’t have a strong work ethic.

•    Negative Attitude – Team members need to have a can-do attitude, and if you have someone who is always being negative, this person may be holding you all back. One negative employee can completely change the atmosphere at work, so consider the effects the person is having on your team dynamic.

•    Dishonest or Unethical – Integrity is critical, and if you find out that a team member has acted unethically or been dishonest to you, let him go right away.

As a business owner, you need to identify when you can work with someone to help them become integrated into your
team and when you need to cut that person. Your awareness of the warning signs is the first step in the right direction.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are not a subtle part of business, they are in fact, very telling of the performance of your business. Whether you are looking to accurately measure the effectiveness of your IT department, customer service staff or the progress of your marketing campaigns, KPIs can lend a hand in practically every aspect of your business.

In terms of what you can learn about your business from KPIs, the sky is really the limit as far as performance goes. You can measure at which rate your sales team is converting leads, you can track the response time by your IT staff to fix a technical problem, and you can even tell how satisfied your customers are in their experience dealing with your company.

What’s more, you can do so through the various different types of KPIs. These include, quantitative indicators, which measure your company’s performance in a given area exponentially. There are also practical indicators that work with the procedures that your company may already have in place. Directional indicators depict whether a company’s performance is rising or declining. Actionable indicators are those KPIs that can be changed within a company fairly easily, and lastly, financial indicators are those that relate to the financial performance of your company and how to change it.

As you can see, there are a number of different KPIs that you can use for different areas and aspects of your business. Regardless of which you use to increase the efficiency of your operations, you should at least look into implementing such strategy. Doing so can, at the very least, give you a concrete idea of where your company stands from a performance aspect, but also likely, it will allow you to improve upon those areas.

Consumers are all over the place, so it shouldn’t be hard for your business to attract them. With more customers comes more money and a higher level of success. Before your business can attract consumers, however, you have to figure out who your ideal customer is.

Who is your ideal customer? Knowing your target demographic will help you to figure out how to market and where to market. According to socialmediabar.com, there are different demographics using the different types of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more. Before you start on social marketing campaigns, you need to know if you will find your ideal customer there or not.

It’s important to remember that you want a high return on investment (ROI). If you’re a small business, you probably don’t have a very large marketing budget. That means that every penny you spend on marketing should be productive. And if you don’t know who your ideal customer is, then you are probably wasting a lot of pennies.

Think about who your product or service is targeted to. What is the age range of the average buyer? Where would a person go to look for your product or service? These are the kinds of questions you need to ask before you start marketing.

If you have CRM software (customer relationship management), then it can help you to run the reports you need. Your business will automatically find your ideal customer because the CRM software will utilize sales information to tell you all about the demographics of your customer base.

The more you know about your ideal customer, the easier it will be to find them. Your business needs to market to the right people and that will ensure you are getting a higher ROI as well as more sales for your business

Creating marketing goals is important if you want your business to succeed. Businesses need effective marketing strategies to keep existing customers and clients coming back on a regular basis. Strategies must be creative and enticing enough to attract new customers. Marketing goals vary from business to business.

Insurance agents may set a goal of reaching fifty potential customers every week, with twenty-five of those actually signing a contract. A furniture company may have slightly different goals such as the sale of ten big screen televisions and ten living room sets sold each week. Other companies may set a monetary goal for the week or month.

How do you know what goal to set? One way is to determine what you have to do to make enough money to cover the expenses of the business for a specific amount of time. Break down bills by the month. Find out how much it takes to run the company and then put a goal in place to make that amount plus 10 percent each week. By doing this, the bills will be covered and extra will be made to cover any emergencies that might occur.

Another goal is to reach a certain number of people each week. Either through radio or television ads that promote the business or personally reaching out to individuals through telephone campaigns or in store promotions, setting marketing goals gives the company something to strive for.

One of the most effective marketing strategies ever used is promoting the company from within. Treat your workers well and they will return the favor. Employees who feel appreciated are more likely to tell others about the products they make and bring in new customers. Effective market strategies are those that reflect a positive attitude. When a company’s own employees are positive about their company, customers will be too.

The terms managing and leading are frequently used interchangeably but are actually quite different in meaning.

Combine the two, and a manager who is also a good leader emerges with a successful business as the end result.

In a nutshell, leadership author and lecturer, Warren Bennis, explained the difference between managing and leading as, “The manager is focused on systems and structure while the leader is focused on people.” In other words, managing concentrates on frameworks and goals while leading motivates people to act.

Of course, it is more complicated than wrapping it up with one easy definition. Alan Murray, of The Wall Street Journal, claims that it is impractical to categorize and divide managing from leading. He writes, “The two go hand in hand, and you cannot have one without the other.”

Not all leaders are in a management position, and not all managers are good leaders. Workers perform their best when their managers do more than just assign tasks but when they also define purpose.

Managers have subordinates who are required to report to them, while leaders have followers who are inspired to act as their leader directs. A manager who is also a good leader produces subordinates who are also followers of his or her lead.

Leaders are not necessarily in an assigned management position, but tend to take charge anywhere. Skilled leaders are not necessarily naturally good at managing a business.

Managers are assigned a position of authority where they have the opportunity to sharpen their leadership skills and broaden their scope of influence beyond best-laid business plans.

Leaders, like the director of a symphony, are those who inspire, guide, and bring out the best in others to trigger within them the desire to excel at what they do best.

Many people think that negotiation is a skill that only sales people need, but the reality is that everyone negotiates every day, both in business and in our daily lives. We negotiate everything from who will walk the dog this evening to what time your boss can expect that critical report to land on his desk.

Some people seem to negotiate with ease, while others feel incredible stress. Here are a few tips to eliminating the stress of negotiations and creating a win-win agreement every time

Negotiate from a position of abundance

Whether you’re negotiating a big deal or just where to go for lunch, always remember that there will be other days and other deals and you will win your fair share. Never go in to a negotiation thinking this is the only deal or the only lunch. In fact, it may help if you consider every negotiation like lunch—there’s always another one tomorrow.

Know what you can live with and what you can’t live without

If you know your bottom line, you know when to walk away from a negotiation and you know what you won’t give up. Knowing this information up front helps you focus and keeps the stress level down.

State clearly what you need or want

Negotiations are much easier if you can be upfront about what you want. Tell the other party what your budget is, or what your constraints are. Let them know what features are important to you. Now you can work together to get as close to what you want as possible.

Ask the other party what they need or want

The ideal win-win negotiation is one where both parties are open and up front about their wants and constraints. Eliminating the gamesmanship that mars so many negotiations eliminates stress and removes the need to “win.” Oddly enough, when you remove the need for one party to win, it becomes much easier for both parties to win.

Ask yourself what’s fair and then give a little more

Most of us have a bias on our own behalf, so giving up that little extra may actually balance the scale. Even if you give more than you need to, it may pay off over time in repeat business and improved relationships.