Believe it or not, having the option to say no, and even better giving this option to your employees, is one of the quickest ways to a lot of yes in your business. 

Popular opinion is that you always, always, always want to be able to say yes to your customers.  The problem with that thinking is that it draws in a lot of customers who maybe shouldn’t really be your customers – or at least should be so on better terms.  Terms you can actually live with.

You have all heard the stories of companies that say yes all the time – even to customers who are just plain ridiculous.  And in all these stories, it works out in the end.  Nordstroms gets a big article in the Wall Street Journal for giving some lady a refund on her snow tires.  The lady is happy, the company is happy with the press.  People who shop at Nordies feel better about paying too much because they are doing so with a great company.  See?  Everybody wins.

How about the other stories though?  The ones that (more…)

2010 seems to be the year when most businesses here in southern Oregon are really starting to understand that their customers actually do want to hear from them.  The thing is, starting the process may actually damage your customer relationship.  Chances are you will make the mistakes that the wider industry have already stumbled over, learned from, and solved – unless you truly embrace these technologies and a strategy on how to truly leverage them here in 2010.

The first part is to avoid the temptation to become overly enamored with the emerging social media options like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.  While they are part of this strategy, and certainly the “shiny new toys” that are gathering so much press these days, they aren’t a be-all-end-all by themselves.  You connect with your customers already in a variety of ways – in person, over the phone, through the mail, and importantly through email.  The process I’m about to describe for you actually apply to all these tools and you should utilize these steps with all of them.  However, I’m going to focus today on email because (1) its probably the most widely accepted by your customers, (2) is relatively inexpensive from a cost and labor standpoint to utilize, and (3) unlike the newer tools has been around for some time and has better developed metrics to date.

So what are other small businesses working on through their email campaigns in 2010.  According to this studyfrom Get Response, there are 5 major trends in email (and by extension all the other ways you connect with your customers) emerging in 2010.  And I’ll give you one more that you should include as well.  The variables to consider in your campaigns should be: (more…)

Man, there sure has been a lot written, particularly in recent years, on how to be an effective manager.  And you probably know a manager who has read enough of this material that they can recite it back to you chapter and verse.

However, most of these people would also have to admit – should they stop long enough to really take a look at what they do during the day – that they don’t actually spend much of their time managing like they read about in their books.  Most of their time is actually spent putting out fires.  In fact, many of the managers that I’ve worked with actually look forward to these emergencies – its when they can really shine.

And you and I are not alone in noticing this trend.  We’re in pretty good company in fact.  Jim Womack, founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute recently wrote about this same phenomena.

Creating basic stability in core processes is one of four basic value-creating tasks of management, yet it is “almost completely ignored,” observed Jim Womack, LEI founder.

“When you go in and spend a day with managers and observe what they are doing – even up close to the top – they are busy talking to the customer about things gone wrong, they are busy talking to the supplier about things gone wrong, they are busy talking to operations or design about things gone wrong. Complete instability.”

As a result, the main work of many managers at many levels in companies using “modern management” systems is constant firefighting.  Here is Jim’s list of the four activities of managers that create value for their organizations: (more…)