The dangerous power of expectations

 good-service-bad-service-your-choice

The problem with promises, implicit or tacit, is that they create expectations.  So what?

Here’s the problem with that:

As business owners we make promises, whether you want to or not.  When we make a promise we are creating the future for other people.  People come and expect that something will happen within a reasonable delay and with respect and a fair price.

I have stopped using stores for numerous reasons, all related to failed expectations.

One of the local sporting stores wanted to charge me for warentee support for a product that they sell and carried a lifetime guarentee!

Fail

I had to chase after the regional distributor and then finally the manufacturer in Germany to get warranty service from my local vendors.  It took me almost two years of intermittent effort to get a lifetime guarantee honoured.

This is exactly the opposite of what we expect of a company that offers a strong warranty on their products.  No one said to me when I purchased my product that the service would be fast and easy.  They just said that they would replace them if they broke due to manufacturers defects.  But our expectations turn around something will happen within a reasonable delay and with respect and a fair price.

So the only way for us to satisfy our clients is to allow them live fulfilled expectations.  So it is up to us to manage the things that we can.

We have to justify:

  • the time it takes
  • the price
  • and the relationships

If you can manage those things then you will be able to have happy clients with fulfilled expectations. They will thus have nothing but good things to say about them because you held up your end of the bargain.

Be proactive and control the promises and turn any tacit agreements into voiced agreements so that people won’t be surprised by their own expectations being unfulfilled!

Good luck and take control.

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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…

underpaid worker

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.

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Apple drives its business. Permission marketing in action

This is not a I love Apple article…so anti-apple people, Stop.  It just happens that I had a great client experience with them.

If you want to know why the Apple Stores do so well, well there is a customer service aspect that goes beyond the whole design, it just works whoop,whoop thing.

We are currently evaluating what kind of IT equipment we will transition to for the next generation of computers, smart-phones, etc.

One of those options is to go into the closed garden that is Apple.  We are tempted.  And I have to say the pre-sale experience has been impressive so far, and I’ll tell you why.

  • Follow ups
  • Interest
  • Listening

They have been there when I called and I was impressed by their capacity to listen recommend products and solutions that they have as well as taking the time to write personalized letters and make jokes in them as well as making sure to be there when they say they will be and they have followed up in a respectful manner.  They are an excellent example of permission marketing.

What is permission marketing, simple, just ask if your allowed to do things before you do them! IE

  • May I call you back?
  • Can I answer any other questions?
  • May I ask you a question?
  • Can I give you any other information to help you with your decision?
  • Do you think you’ll be making a decision in the next few weeks
  • May I call you back after that date?

So when we ask our clients what they want we feel respected and it makes us responsible for our relations with them  their actions and our feelings towards them.  It is the new wave and it is so much better than older methods.

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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.

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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…

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