The Double Edged Blade of Charm

Charm is a wonderful thing.

I love a charmer, someone who comes along with a big smile and is eager to help.  That is the best kind of reception that we can receive; if they have a desire to fulfil your desires and expectations.  All of these things are really pleasant to find in your environment.

But there is another side to the charmer’s personality.  They expect you to say yes to their effort.  They are not used to being denied for no other reason but you don’t feel like it.  You are supposed to be polite and accept their effort as cash and feel bad if you say no.  So, we as customers will avoid that guilty feeling of denying effort by saying yes.

That works with lots of people, but not really.  If you leave with the feeling of being taken advantage of you will be an unhappy customer and avoid that store in the future because you don’t like that icky feeling of being used.

So it is important that your best charmers are well trained in being able to take no as an acceptable answer to their charm.

It was quite funny this morning when I was sitting in the coffee shop where I wrote this article and I wasn’t quite ready for anything and a lovely waitress comes up with the full blown charm machine running and asks if I would like a good capuccino or a café au lait in a bowl…I said not yet; and I was briefly reminded of Bilbo’s Gollum moment in the Lord of the Rings:

I think I was momentarily scared…fortunately there were witnesses so I was okay.

But it is to be remembered as the supervisor of the sales force that our clients are more than just tools to fulfil  our objectives.  They need to be listened to and empathised with.  So make sure your charmers leave the clients charmed and not mildly terrified, queasy or guilty.

Respect vs. duty: The Forgotten Power of Complicity

In any hierarchical relationship there is the a social contract in play.  You may ask “Why are you writing about this, Aaron?” and you’ll see that it makes a difference to your clients how your employees feel about their work and workplace.

This image comes to mind…

This whole thing is related to broken window theory.  The less you maintain your workplace the less people respect it, the more you maintain it the better people feel about being there.  As the owner of your business, you have to provide a number of things to your employees to make sure that they feel that they are respected and honoured individuals in the work place.  If you can manage this you will create something far more important than DWYL(do what you love).  Because people are far more interested in working at a place that respects them and treats them as honoured members of the team than they are in simply getting paid.  That doesn’t mean we can underpay workers it just means that once fair wages are in place we have to begin with aspiration management.  So I will argue that as both employee and employer, the most important feature of our personal self-respect is the ability to accomplish goals and advance our perception of what we think we should be doing.

So should you love your job? No, but you should be able to respect what you do and the people that you do it with and for.  When we get up in the morning and we look forward to working with our co-workers, because we have fun together, the world is a different place.

When we get up in the morning and you’re going to work with a gang of morons, it’s harder to get out of bed.  So choose people and employees based on whether you think that you can respect them.

Now I walk into two different businesses and here is what happens

1) respect absent:

There is tension in the environment and the people destined to serve the clients are under motivated.  They are there to collect their pay-cheque until they find another job.  I am disinterested to buy here because I become uncomfortable in the environment.

2) Respect present:

People are having fun and like to work with the people in their environment and feel more at ease working as a team.  I get better service and am at ease dealing with the people, because I am also being respected in the environment.

So the more effort you put into maintaining the excellent relations inside your company the better your client relations will be and the more your business will flourish.

Attachment Theory. Understanding needs!

So last time we looked at the hierarchy of needs by Maslow, and how the basic needs are the same for everybody, but how we arrive at those needs differs between people.  Now we are going to look at how using basic needs allows us to create relationships that last a lifetime and to which we are fundamentally bonded.  attachment theory is something that has been being developed since the UN wanted to create awareness of the impacts on children being left orphans after the Second World War.  It has largely supplanted Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as the dominant approach in understanding people through Psychoanalysis.

“Okay Aaron, you’re babbling…what’s your point?”

Pay attention, the whole world revolves around this theory now and it explains why social media works and why you should care!

Today people are in an ocean of media marketing crap.  We are constantly bombarded by people telling us how much we should give them our money because they make the biggest, fastest, hottest, sexiest, most ecological thermonuclear widget in the world.  But what actually attracts people is calling to their attachments.  And those attachments may be parental, relational, emotional, sexual, political, and even brand.  But how do we attach ourselves to a brand??

Easy, values!

People live in a theoretical future.  People don’t spend there time in the present, they live in some hoped for future that calls them to do things today.  If our society didn’t completely fail us we feel part of some group.  And those groups are what link us together;  us and them.  Social media, and even brands are about creating links between culture and product.  Their product has to make my life a representation of what I want.

When it comes down to it, I could care less about the difference in flavour between coke a Pepsi!  I want to drink Coke because it’s the real thing. I don’t want to be part of the new generation I want to be solidly planted in the historical number one.  I see myself as the solid winner not the substitute number two.  So I see Coke as my drink and Pepsi as the replacement.

Now ask yourself to what subset of humanity do you want to attach yourself?  What need do you want to fulfil as a brand?  That is the group who will become your tribe and the people who you will want to market to.

Have fun!

Don’t call your clients liars

My Grandmother was easy to set off.   If you wanted to see someone rear up and kick call her a liar…and really I think this is the case for almost anyone!  People all want to be seen as good and one of the things that we all know is bad is lying.  There are many times in a day when we tell white lies but the key to those is that they are mutually agreed on and we all know that they are kindnesses and not genuine attempts to mislead.  So I was talking to one of my suppliers for, what I was to discover was, the last time.  And the conversation went like this.

Me: There is a mistake with the order…it was supposed to be one-sided not two…

Supplier: So?

Me: We need it to be one-sided so we can remove one sheet and not two…

Supplier:  Well my order sheet says you ordered two-sided!

Me: No…I remember the conversation I requested one-sided after you called me asking if it was two or one.

Supplier: Well my order sheet says two…

Me: Okay.  We, my associates and I, discussed this at length…We absolutely knew that the job had to be one-sided recto only.

Supplier: Well our order sheet says recto/verso…

Me: Alright, thank you.

And that is the last time that that business will ever hear from me for a print job…ever!  not only that it is the last time I will recommend that company as a business partner.  I even started the conversation willing to split the difference since I needed to make changes on top of fixing the problem.  So they lost a client who has pretty decent volume as we have manuals and employee handbooks that we create for our clients.  How many clients can you afford to lose in a year in an industry experiencing compression and closures left right and centre it seems to me the last thing you want to be doing is calling your clients liars to their face.

Now what to do about that?

• Find a compromise.
• Ask/figure out what the client needs, not what they want.
• Always give regular clients the option to strike out once.  but also keep track of abusive clients so that you can make sure your not being taken advantage of.
• Remember a returning client is one that will be much more profitable.

So be careful what you are saying to your clients when you tell them they are not telling you the truth…because you are calling them a liar…be ready for the consequences.

Loss and moving on!

Freedom is the ultimate goal of many people and you know what…when we loose something we are freed from it.  Something wonderful was opened up when someone said, the stuff you own starts owning you.  The something is true in many relationships, places, attachements of any kind.  We are creatures of habit and it can be difficult to create a habit of change and growth.  One of the ultimate goals of many is to grow through out their entire life.

And sometimes we become fixed, we grow solid and sedimented into our relationships and we mourn them when they are lost.  But what we often forget is that we are suddenly invited by the world and life to reinvent something new to replace that lost content.  Life abhors a vacuum and we are able to invent anything that we can envision.  Life is wonderful for that.

When there is nothing we are before a kind of blank canvas, in our case that canvas is our life, our business, our relationships that we had before.  Now you have the opportunity to invent something, a style, a product, a new way of behaving that allow us to grow and create the world that we really want.

It may take great courage, or just great energy to break out of that mould that we find ourselves in.   However every body has that spark inside themselves, perhaps in your team or your very self.  The spark is always burning deep in our soul and it wants to create that freedom every day no matter how sure you are that your life is never going to change there is a way to open yourself up to growth and making something new….

So the next time you loose something or someone, remember the thing that you are feeling is not bad it is the vacuum that needs filling.  It is a call to action to make a better life for yourself, to create the thing you always wanted to do, have, be to take its place.

GO make something new…