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People & Relationships

Influencing and Reinforcing the Behavior You Want in Employees and Customers

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This article is contributed by R.L. Fielding who writes regularly for Dittman Incentive Marketing.

“If only I could get people to do what I want them to do…”

How often have you thought that … or said that? And how often has the answer eluded you?

We’d love to think that employees will do the right thing and that customers will make the right choice, but since only a segment of your employees are motivated to do what you need them to do, and only some of your prospects have become customers (while the others remain only prospects), the question is … how can you get the rest of the people to see the light?

The answer lies in the “Zone of Self-Interest.” People will do the things you want if they perceive it to be clearly in their own best self-interest. And when that perception exists, you’ll be well on your way to exceeding your business goals.

Here’s How It Works

No matter what you need to accomplish, you can put a price tag on it. Some things lead to greater sales and others to lower costs. And as soon as you put a value on it, employee and customer loyalty rewards programs can help you accomplish it.

The approach is simple, and it’s proven to work. Identify a simple activity that you know to be key to your success and calculate the dollar value to you when it’s accomplished to your satisfaction…then reward it every single time it occurs. Every single time.

Every time a program participant does what you want done, he or she earns points (based on the value you’ve calculated). The points are redeemable for desirable merchandise, exotic travel, or other options. On a real-time basis, every participant can view a custom, personal statement, which details the credits and/or debits made to his/her account and the current account balance.

The Implication for You

The concept of the Zone of Self-Interest revolutionized the airline industry, then most other consumer businesses. Think about your own behavior and how it’s affected by the opportunity to earn free trips or hotel nights or merchandise for providing a seller with conscious loyalty. The rewards fall into your Zone of Self-Interest, and it motivates you to do something you normally wouldn’t do … and do it frequently.

Success breeds success. Unlike many programs that start with fireworks and finish with a fizzle, behavior reinforcement programs grow in effectiveness. With each passing day, the motivation power strengthens, and the bond between you and your program participants deepens. Simply put, a well-built behavior reinforcement program will produce more incremental revenue than it costs.

About Dittman Incentive Marketing

This article was provided by Dittman Incentive Marketing (http://www.dittmanincentives.com/), a quality leader in the field of people performance improvement. Since 1976, Dittman has helped companies achieve critical corporate goals via original, one-of-a-kind employee and customer loyalty rewards programs that inspire a sales force to sell more, customers to buy more, and others to do more.

R.L. Fielding Bio

R.L. Fielding is a freelance writer who has written on a wide variety of topics, with special expertise in the education, pharmaceutical and healthcare, financial service and manufacturing industries.

Categories
People & Relationships

5 Strategies for Creating Effective Follow Up

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For a solo professional having an up-to-date contact management database is one of the KEY administrative systems you have to have for your business. And, even more important, is having a system in place to create effective follow-up. Your business is built on following up leads and building relationships.

If you don’t have a contact management system in place, you will not be able to follow-up effectively with prospects, you could lose clients, and you will not be able to build your business.

Your contact management system needn’t be a ‘bells and whistles’ expensive database but it does need to be easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy for you to find your contact data. Once your contact management system is in place you need to ensure that you keep it up-to-date and are using it to follow up with prospects.

Spreadsheets are a great tool for keeping track of your contacts, but even they have their limitations, particularly if your database is starting to get very large – anything over 100 contacts really needs to be on a computerised, contact management database.

My very favourite contact management system is ACT! It really meets all of the criteria above in that it’s:

Easy to use;
Easy to maintain; and
Easy to find contacts.

And here’s a tip I have for you – you don’t necessarily need the latest version, especially if you’re going to use it just for yourself. I bought my first version of ACT! (ACT! 6.0 2004) off Ebay for $20. If you’re going to buy software off Ebay check that it’s being sold as ‘brand new and unregistered’. This was a very small investment for me to make to see if I liked the system and once I knew it was ideal I had no hesitation in upgrading to the latest version.

Keeping your contact management database up-to-date can seem a bit daunting, particularly if you have a lot of contacts. Here are my top 5 strategies for creating effective follow-up and keeping your contact management system up-to-date.

1. Update as you go along! Whenever you speak with or email a contact take a few minutes afterwards to update your database with this information BEFORE moving on to the next task. For example, did your conversation end with you promising to contact them again in a months’ time? If so, note this down and create a follow-up task there and then so you don’t forget.

2. Touch base regularly. Each month go through your database and see who you haven’t had any contact with over the last few months. Send them a ‘just getting in touch with you’ email, or call them.

3. Don’t forget good old-fashioned snail mail! Even snail-mail has gone all hi-tech. A great follow-up tool, and one that I currently use, is Send Out Cards – it’s really quick and simple to use. You can choose to send either a card or postcard, and it makes for a great ‘stay-in-touch’ service. And just as simple to use as email, only more personal! You can even upload your own handwriting font to personalise your cards even more.

4. Send a newsletter. Okay, it’s not exactly personal one-on-one follow up, but it is keeping you in touch with your database. Very often your newsletter will generate a response from your reader, which means you will be able to turn this into a one-on-one communication with your contact!

5. Keep the process going! Make it a habit to update your database regularly. If you don’t get the opportunity to update your database as you’re going along (Tip #1) spend 20 minutes at the end of each day reflecting on what you’ve done during the day, who you’ve contacted, what the outcome was, and enter all of this information into your contact management system.
Follow these 5 tips and you will soon see your business start to grow through effective follow-up!

Categories
People & Relationships

Teaching People To Learn

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Common sense seems to be in very short supply. Perhaps it always was.
Even allowing for the creative and often hysterical reporting of the news media it is hard to avoid the conclusion that those making and executing laws and regulations in both Britain and the EU have taken leave of their senses. A previous culture of personal responsibility seems to have changed into a culture of dependence and blame.
Not, of course, entirely, but significantly.
This is wholly understandable. A society that rewards the feckless and punishes the responsible must expect the message to be understood and acted upon. Perhaps our rulers have forgotten that true compassion – indeed, true love – involves helping people to achieve and maintain their independence. Removing independence is theft of the most precious possession we have.
So far this sounds more like a political speech on behalf of the British Fascist Party than a basis for discussing what people need to learn. I make these points, however, because unless our education system starts with the right premise, everything else that it does will at best be ineffective and at worst be damaging.
I don’t need to tell you the difference between education and training, between knowledge and reflection, between information and thought. So I’ll skip the bit about facts, passing exams, exam marking and the roulette wheel of teachers who can (and those who cannot) forecast the likely questions with reasonable accuracy. I’ll omit the scathing references I would have made about people who decry the Arts subjects. I’ll nod only briefly towards the words of George Santayana (1863-1952) ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it‘.
I’ll go on to why what we need to learn has changed so much and so recently.
My first point is that in the past few years and with considerable Government help, we have come to understand better the relationship between body and brain. If there is a work / life balance to be struck there is also a body / brain balance in need of attention.
Today we are at the threshold of understanding the mind. We have not got there yet but we will, and reasonably soon if I am not much mistaken. We have started to appreciate that the mental prisons we often feel trapped in are largely of our own making. We are all capable of much more than we thought.
Such potential brings with it the responsibility to use well the resources we manipulate and to learn a new view of the time over which we manipulate them. Strangely, our Victorian forebears had a better sense of this aspect of time than we do. They invested for what they saw as the future; we invest for the next annual – or half-yearly, or quarterly – sometimes even monthly – profit results.
Proper planning has never been so important and never so neglected.
Second, we need to learn the basic skills of interpersonal communication – or social intercourse, if you like. Whether you were in favour of invading Iraq or against it I think we can all agree that in the 21st Century settling disagreements by thuggery is an admission of failure on a breathtaking scale. But that thuggery doesn’t originate in the White House or Downing Street, it originates in Coronation Street, in your local town, the nearby neighbourhood, in the way we speak to a traffic warden, in the way officials deal with us.
Have you noticed how people seldom ask questions of each other these days?
Maybe they think it’s intrusive or not very polite. At a time when many of us are going to spend more time in front of our computers we need to improve our social intercourse and change it from the drinks party or the Friday night booze-up to intelligent, informed discussion laced with that unique ability we have to be amusing about serious matters.
Some races have always been rather inhibited about asking questions. We cannot afford such inhibitions any more. It leads to a collection of floating islands, not to a society.
Third, we need to learn the joy of work. We’ve separated work and leisure to the point where work is seen as bad and leisure is seen as good. But everyone knows that too much of either is wrong. To do this we must make work joyful, not always easy when rough conditions, noisy machinery, inconsiderate bosses, rapacious shareholders demand effort and forbearance that is above and beyond normal duty. For all that, work must become a place of joy.
We seem to have failed to learn that the true satisfaction of a job well done is not in dollars but in the heart of the person doing it. In my mentoring the simple and true story of Alf Tuck, the man who came to thatch the cottage roof, has transformed the attitudes of hundreds of people towards their work.
If you want to know it, please ask me by email, and I will send it to you.
Fourth, we need to reconsider what facts we need to know. Five years ago it was important to know quite a lot of facts. Today we need to know different facts:
– how to access and store information on the internet
– how to discriminate between right and wrong information and good and bad sources
– how to reflect on the facts we learn; facts by themselves are like random numbers; they only
– become useful when we interpret them and make decisions based on them.
Fifth, our civilisation is based on trust. That trust is based on truth, a commodity in very short supply at present. No truth, no trust. No trust, no society. There will never be perfect truth and we have to learn to distinguish between truth, lies and hyperbole. If we do not understand and accept the relevance of truth for our very existence, our society will increasingly fail.
There are many other things we have to learn, of course. These are, to my way of thinking, the five essentials. They are at present being neglected in favour of doubtful academic awards.
If you agree with my very brief summary of what people need to learn today there is one remaining question: where do we get the teachers to do it?
That’s my question to you.

JohnBittlestonPhoto.jpgJohn Bittleston blogs at TerrificMentors.com, a site that provides mentoring for those who wish a change in career or job, wanting to start a business or looking to improve their handling of people (including themselves).

Categories
People & Relationships

Hurry Up and Wait!

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As part of what my company does in the talent representation business, we go to many photo shoots with our celebrities. From Playboy to Reader’s Digest. From Sports Illustrated to Newsweek. An area of expertise i have acquired is the art of Hurry up and Wait! Even though most people don’t do what i do, they understand this concept. I have a cure. One word really, PREPARATION!!!
The best way to reduce wasted time and focus on the job at hand is to have you, your staff, all parties involved prepared. For the obvious and the unthinkable. The tiniest detail can snag a multi million $ project. To have all of the duck in a row is always a monumental undertaking but one worthy of everyone’s dedication and commitment.
Whatever your industry is, there are projects and programs that require fore thought. If you are in charge or aspire to be in charge here is a great moment for you to shine! There is nothing senior management likes less than paying for people just sitting around and doing nothing. Creating meaningful activity not just action with no purpose can undoubtedly facilitate continuity and expedience.
Whether you are on a photo shoot, media tour, television commercial shoot, corporate team building event, brain storming session, etc., plan to work and work your plan!
EvanMorgensteinPhoto.jpgEvan Morgenstein: Entrepreneur, Consultant, Sports Agent, Motivational Speaker. Morgenstein started in the tech industry after graduating in 1987 from Syracuse University. Working for several partially owned IBM partnerships, Morgenstein learned from some of the best. He has parlayed that into a dominant company Premier Management Group in the celebrity talent and sports marketing industry.

Categories
People & Relationships

Are You One of The Monkeys?

I received an email that lead me to this story. In a very few words it explains why change is so difficult. At the same time, it asks you to take a look at your behavior to see how you are contributing to the success of the team. I post the original article below for your reading pleasure and I am including the link where I found the original article:

http://www.iwdp.co.uk/articles/think_outside_the_box.php. It was written by Gary Stuart Wicks is the Director of Media Services for TiggerOnSpeed Ltd.

This is a powerful story.
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Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you do a particular thing in a particular way? Do you just follow the advice of those that have been doing the task the longest without further question?
Consider the following scenario, then consider your position within your company and ask yourself honestly, why?

Let’s begin with a cage that contains five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of step ladders underneath it.
Before long, a monkey will go to the step ladder and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the first rung, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt to retrieve the banana resulting in another soaking for all five monkeys.

After a few more attempts any monkey making the trip towards the step ladder will be prevented by the remaining monkeys.

Now, remove the water source. Extract one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and heads towards the step ladder; to his surprise and annoyance he is instantly attacked by the other monkeys.

After a second attempt and resulting attack, he is aware of the fact that if he makes his way to the step ladder in order to retrieve the banana he will be assaulted by the remaining monkeys.

Next, remove another of the original team of five monkeys and once more replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes towards the step ladder and is attacked. This time though, the previous newcomer has taken part in the attack with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the step ladder and is in turn attacked.

Of the attacking force two of the four monkeys have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the step ladder, or even why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys that were aware of the water source and in turn were sprayed have now been replaced.

Nevertheless, no monkey will ever again approach the step ladder.

Why not?

Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been around here; and that’s how company policy begins.

So, now you should be considering what you can do to avoid making the same mistakes as the group of monkeys; this is not something that can be instructed to you, this is something that only you can discover relative to your current position within the scenario.

If your team within the company acts in a similar fashion to the monkeys then you are undoubtedly not getting the best from your team, and therefore you are not providing your best to the company.

Do you want the presence of your company to suffer? Think outside the box.